The Daily Grasshopper

Before I get on with today's news, I want to revisit yesterday's, because I omitted a crucial farce from my essay "Farces and Tragedies." In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, you could read the following article in the "Marketplace" section: "Americans Working In Europe Find Ways To Deal With Politics" (WSJ, 3/25/03, p. B1). The gist of the piece is that now that the shooting has started in the Middle East, American businesspeople are facing overt hostility from their European counterparts. The article quotes a guy named Bill Kahl, who said, "It is somewhat of a stigma being an American overseas these days." I would imagine so. I suspect that in some places overseas, it's a downright occupational hazard.

The article begins this way: "Business has never been better for Bill Kahl, executive vice president at Henkel Consumer Adhesives, a unit of Henkel Group of Germany. His company's Duck brand duct tape is in such steep demand by consumers hoping to protect their homes from terrorist attacks that the Avon, Ohio, factory where it is made is operating around the clock." I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that business picked up at approximately the same time the Department of Homeland Security told people that sealing a room with duct tape and plastic was the best way to survive a terrorist attack. In fact, I have the numbers for you, courtesy of "The Dead Parrot," a weekly weblog that I've recently started getting (and enjoy a great deal):

• Amount the Kahl family of Avon, Ohio, contributed to Republicans in 2000: $130,660 (http://www.opensecrets.org)
• Percentage of American duct tape that the family company, Duck Products, produces: 46 percent (Washington Post, 2/21/03)
• Factor by which company's sales increased after Homeland Security issued its build-a-shelter instructions: 2-3

I am tempted here to cite David Hannum's (not P.T. Barnum's) estimate of the uncommonly high rate of sucker births per hour in this country, but why rub it in?

On to the news...

Judging from the newspapers I'm looking at, there's considerable excitement in officialdom about the possibility of an uprising against Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi city of Basra. The front page of the Boston Globe's "War in Iraq" section tells us "Revolt reported against Iraqi forces in Basra." In the New York Times, it's "Hints of an Uprising." The Wall Street Journal, throwing caution to the wind, states unequivocally on its front page that "Shiite Uprising In Basra Brings Hopes and Fears."

But what if it's not true at all? What if the story of an uprising was fabricated by U.S./U.K. intelligence agencies and relayed to gullible mainstream reporters (is there any other kind these days?) in an effort to gin up support for an actual uprising in Basra or elsewhere? It's worth considering, especially given the fact that the war planners were banking on just this sort of activity once their war began. Here's the assessment of Paul Wolf, a journalist whose work on the U.S. role in Colombia is first-rate. He's also been sending out commentary on Iraq (this was sent out to his list at about 11:00 p.m. last night):

"Sky News, the British equivalent of the pro-war Fox News in the US, dropped a bomb on the world's media today, reporting a popular uprising against Saddam Hussein in the city of Basra, all according to plan:

'Undercover British intelligence officers were said to have been working inside the city of 1.5 million people for weeks in a bid to engineer the unrest.'

My guess is that all the British have engineered is this rumor, which was naturally repeated in dozens of news reports. The Sky News article was in turn based on an anonymous British 'intelligence source,' then denied by the US and British governments. Good enough for a rumor, I guess. More news articles are being written around the world on this theme as I write this email.

According to Sky News Foreign Editor Tim Marshall, if the reports are true, 'it could trigger more uprisings across parts of Iraq.' Wishful thinking? Perhaps it is the secret strategy."

If there is any "secret strategy," as Wolf suspects, you'll find no such heresy in the mainstream press. The Wall Street Journal, as I noted, takes the British intelligence report at face value: "The Shiite Muslims of the besieged Iraqi port city of Basra have begun rising up against Iraqi troops in their midst, U.S. and British officials say." Nowhere in the remainder of the article is there any scrutiny given to the claim, or "independent confirmation" of the uprising, which is the phrase Western journalists use when they want to cast doubt on Iraqi casualty figures.

Which is not to say that there was none. Agence France-Presse reported the following:

"Iraqi Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf denied the report in a statement to Al-Jazeera television...

'I categorically deny these provocative lies the Americans are trying to spread through CNN,' Sahhaf told Al-Jazeera.

'These are lies issued by the US administration and British government... with the aim of demoralising (the Iraqi population)."

The Times made several mentions of the "uprising" in its Wednesday coverage, but made no mention of the Iraqi Information Minister's denial:

"Reports of an uprising in the city of 1.5 million people came after British warplanes bombed the Baath Party headquarters in the city.

In an early raid on Tuesday morning at Zubayr, a Basra suburb, British commandos seized the "most senior" official of the governing Baath Party in Basra and killed 20 of his aides and security guards, said a British army spokesman here, Lt. Col. Chris Vernon. He declined to identify the Iraqi official, but said he was under interrogation.

Iraqi defenders stormed out of the city Tuesday morning, attacking to the south with tanks and armored vehicles in a surprise countermove against British forces. But the Royal Marines called in airstrikes that destroyed the attacking column with rocket fire, British officials said.

Amid fears of a relief crisis in Basra, where normal water supplies have been cut by 60 percent, the British Seventh Armored Brigade, known as the Desert Rats, took up positions on the outskirts for a possible dash into the center to destroy Iraqi irregulars estimated to number 1,000. Those forces appear to have been organized by the Baath Party command to keep control of the provincial capital.

Allied planes dropped leaflets with satellite telephone numbers, encouraging the Basra authorities to call to negotiate surrender.

Another British spokesman, at United States Central Command headquarters in Qatar, said the Basra uprising began in the afternoon 'against the Baath Party.'

'The ruling party responded by firing mortars at the crowd that was advancing towards them,' said the spokesman, Alan Lockwood. 'Our artillery responded to that with shells and mortars.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/26/international/worldspecial/26MILI.html

Only the Boston Globe offered the other side of the story to its readers, with this couple of paragraphs in its article "Revolt reported against Iraqi forces in Basra":

"But the Iraqi information minister, Mohammed al-Sahhaf, denied that any revolt was taking place in Basra, the country's second-largest city, where Shiites constitute a majority.

'The situation is stable,' Sahhaf told Al-Jazeera, the television network based in Qatar. 'Resistance is continuing and we are teaching them more lessons.'"

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/085/nation/Revolt_reported_against_Iraqi_forces_in_Basra+.shtml

All of which is to say that even the "liberal" media can not always be relied upon to give you "All the News That's Fit to Print," and that a wise American will gather their news from as many sources as humanly possible. And, for God's sake, please do not believe all that your TV is telling you. Here are a few websites that offer a different perspective on what's happening on the ground in Iraq:

http://www.aeronautics.ru/news/news002/news078.htm

http://www.iraqpeaceteam.org/

http://dear_raed.blogspot.com

http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

Keep reading - this war might take a while. According to another report that Wolf sent me of an interview with Syrian Information Minister Adnan Omran, the U.S. occupation force is going to have a tough job. It begins after our "victory."

"The day they defeat the Iraqi regime and take control is the day the disaster begins. In Baghdad, they will find themselves facing daggers drawn from every corner. It will be a small-scale Vietnam. Small cuts will be made day after day and week after week until the Americans are gone. It is incredible that George Bush has been deceived by his advisers into believing he is poised for victory. This advice is based on the most stupid calculations ever made of the social dynamic in Iraq."

Propaganda from Syria? Maybe. Any better or any worse than what we're being subjected to here at home? Definitely not.

PK
http://www.dailygrasshopper.com