Mark Urban's May 31, 2007 Response

[David Edwards]

David,

You began you ended your last message by arguing, "you seem to have no
awareness that the reality might diverge from official pronouncements".
It's a remarkable thing to accuse an experienced journalist of. I might
equally counter: do you really believe that you can come up with any
perspective on coverage of the Iraq imbroglio that will not already have
occured to someone who has been working intensively on it for the past
five years ? We live and breath this stuff 24/7, and we often debate the
issues among colleagues or in public.

Now let's get back to the things you objected to, ie my characterisation
of current US operations in Iraq and their objectives. I reached these
conclusions as a result of considering a very wide variety of inputs:
official statements; official news soruces such as spokesmen or
briefing; unofficial contacts in the military or government - people who
breach regulations, risking their careers to talk to me; a wide network
of Iraqi unofficial contacts; reading the coverage of other journalists;
jihadist or other Islamic websites; going my own field trips to Iraq,
seeing the 'ground reality' on street patrols. So, if I say the current
Baghdad Security Plan is aimed at dampening sectarian violence in this
city, it is as a result of synthesising all of those inputs. It is not
simply a matter of accepting the official version, as you mischevously
characterise it. What I can tell you though, after 25 years in this
business, is that the stuff you get from your unofficial contacts
usually does conform with the official version. When I have found it
doesn't, don't worry, I make the most of it - for example with my book
'Big Boys' Rules'.

So what about your analysis ? I don't imagine that the fact it is put
together by you sitting at home, sifting current events through a dense
filter of ideology necessarily makes you wrong. I do however think that
your desire to force all of the elements in a woefully complex situation
into a simple proposition such as, "America's real objective is to
smother all opposition so they can pinch the oil", to be a sorry form of
fundamentalism. There have been enough revelations about the early
planning (or lack of it) in books like 'Fiasco' or 'State of Denial' for
us to know now that Donald Rumsfeld did not think in terms of long term
occupation - indeed he directed the Joint Chiefs to plan for a drawdown
within nine months of the invasion to 5,000 US troops in Iraq. As for
the oil money, it flows through the Iraqi oil ministry, which somehow
managed not to spend $10bn of it last year.

Anyone wanting to report these issues in a sophisticated way has to take
account of views that jar with their own analysis or sources. They also
have to acknowledge that countries or armies can have multiple
objectives that are not necessarily mutually exclusive. This is why I
acknowledged some of the other US Army missions in Iraq. It would be as
simplistic for me to claim 'they are just there to help' as it is for
you to argue 'they are just there to smother resistance so they can take
the oil'. If you want a political sub-text to the surge, perhaps
concentrate on the possibility that it is designed to keep US troop
levels high until the 2008 presidential election, so that the Bush camp
can blame any subsequent 'mission failure' on the next administration.
That's what some of my sources suggest, and it's something I've already
reported on Newsnight.
All the best
Mark

[SteveUK2]

[aladin2591]

As someone who lived in Iraq until the age of 24, I would like to say few words about the obsession of Middle Eastern politicians/people with conspiracies set against them by western nations but forgetting that those conspiracies are the make of the local dictatorships across the middle east. If US and other western power are just interested in the oil resources of Iraq then I would like them to exploit the oil resources of the middle east as they did in gulf states such United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where huge infrastructures had been constructed in those countries, on the other hand Iraq under Saddam patriotic regime had been ripping off its human and natural resources and claiming that, this waste of resources, is for good cause as in wiping Israel out the middle east map and restore the land to the Palestinians; what nonsense? Local dictatorships are continually abusing natural resources of their countries in the name of patriotism, anti-imperialism and the liberation of Palestine.

I think that the benefits of toppling Saddam's regime would be mroe evident in the long run, and I would like to add that if Iraqis manage to pull a democratic state then future generation will be thanking the west for their intervention in Iraq……Al
_________________
Al Atar at http://iraqalatar.blogspot.com/

[SteveUK2]

In the same way that Iranians thanked the west for intervention in Iran in overthrowing their government in 1953?

[aladin2591]

Although we have a lot to say about this subject but we condense as much as we can......

My statement, on the good long term effect of western intervention in Iraq and toppling Saddam’s brutal regime, is conditional rather than an absolute prediction. The condition is “if Iraqis managed to get their act together and pull a sensible democratic constitution”. And if someone suggests that the West is more interested in local brutal dictatorships than liberal democracies as in manipulating the political situations or conspiring to stop the spreading of democracies then I would disagree with that on the ground that liberal democracies in the Middle East will generate more benefits to the West than brutal dictatorships. During Saddam’s era 80% of Iraq’s gross national revenue was spent on low rate weapons bought from the old Soviet Union. The T52 tank used to be sold to Saddam’s regimes for over $5 million and we know T52 is the late 50s generation. Another example of the same kind is the low rate Scud missiles sold to Saddam's brutal regime with high cost. That wasn’t beneficial to the West or US, was it?

The core of my argument is that free market economy hand in hand with liberal democracy, if established in Iraq, will prevent the abuse of dictatorships, in the name of patriotism and anti-imperialism, from spreading and would maintain human rights of citizens who were deprived from exercising their rights in a civil society and subsequently establishing liberal democracies and free market economies would be more benefitial to the West.

Mark Urban’s argument or I should say his reflection that US didn’t plan well the intervention in Iraq needs to be considered as a reasonable evidence or at least an indication that the US hasn’t intended just to exploit the Iraqi oil, but there are more complex issues involved as stated in the above paragraph.

As for the 1953 Iran, the 50s US strategy has evolved from the cold war era where dictatorships were vital elements in maintaining the balance of superpowers into more of a pro-liberal democracies to even benefit more…...Al
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Al Atar at http://iraqalatar.blogspot.com/