politics

Times Reports Iraq Carnage, Bloggers Ask for More

Good news or bad news — which to report? Plus, why aren’t Iraqis more supportive of the occupation of their country?

August 16, 2006

Sometimes, it seems like reporters just can’t win. Long tagged with the criticism that they aren’t reporting enough good news from Iraq, now some are saying that they’re not reporing enough bad news from that war-ravaged country. Spurring the latest round of unhappiness over the coverage of the war, yesterday’s New York Times reported that “July appears to have been the deadliest month of the war for Iraqi civilians.” July’s total of 3,438 civilian deaths was “nearly double the toll in January,” said the Times — and now a couple of bloggers feel that the media should start reporting more of the carnage.

The Reaction writes today that “The U.S. media should take a page from the Al-Jazeera playbook and show the dead, show the injured, show the body parts and blown off body bits. They should show the true mayhem we have unleashed, then next time maybe we, as a nation, will think twice before rushing to war.”

The Times also reported that “the news media ha[s] drastically underreported the level of violence in Iraq,” spurring Thoughts of an Average Woman to ask, “Over 100 people a day are being killed, and where were the news reports?” (Here’s a hint: check the inside pages of any daily newspaper.) TOAAW then tries to answer her own question: “Bottom line is the American people are kept in the dark, and I want to know why that is. Is it so Cheney and Bush’s … buddys can continue to reap millions of taxpayer dollars, because ‘we the people’ are kept too stupid to know any better? Is it so Bush, through Cheney et al, can continue to ‘expand’ presidential powers until they are at monarchy/dictatorial levels?”

Sticking with Iraq, there was a piece in the Times this morning saying that President Bush is “frustrated” by the amount of public support for the occupation of Iraq, among Iraqis.

Dependable Renegade isn’t quite as puzzled as the president as to why not all Iraqis are happy with the occupation, writing, “We came in, removed the only person holding the country together (albeit, through a dictatorship), blasted their infrastructure back to the Stone Age, set back women’s rights about 1,000 years, opened up a Pandora’s box of sectarian violence, and demanded they accept a Western style of government, and THIS is how they thank us? … Build nations? [Bush] couldn’t build a peanut butter sandwich.”

A Newer World sees this as a “new meme” in our domestic public discourse that goes something like the following: “If only the Iraqi people had been more grateful for the ‘gift of freedom’ that the U.S. gave them, everything would have worked out fine. We did everything we could. We gave it our best shot. But ultimately, Iraqis were too stupid, too selfish, too sectarian, too whatever, to accept our ‘gift.’ Don’t blame us for the chaos. Blame Iraq.”

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Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.