US Networks won't mention the wars much- 181 minutes, 150,000 troops!

New York Times reporter Brian Stelter talks to disgruntled war reporters about their dispatches. Most grumble that American networks put wars on the back burner. Here's his piece:

Getting a story on the evening news isn't easy for any correspondent. And for reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is especially hard, according to Lara Logan, the chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. So she has devised a solution when she is talking to the network.

"Generally what I say is, 'I'm holding the armor-piercing R.P.G.,' " she
said last week in an appearance on "The Daily Show," referring to the initials for rocket-propelled grenade. " 'It's aimed at the bureau chief, and if you don't put my story on the air, I'm going to pull the trigger.' "
Ms. Logan let a sly just-kidding smile sneak through as she spoke, but her point was serious. Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever.

"If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts," Ms. Logan said.

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been "massively scaled back this year." Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The "CBS Evening News" has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC's "World News" and 74 minutes on "NBC Nightly News." (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television "with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad." He said CBS correspondents can "get in there very quickly when a story merits it."

In a telephone interview last week, Ms. Logan said the CBS News bureau in Baghdad was "drastically downsized" in the spring. The network now keeps a producer in the country, making it less of a bureau and more of an office.

Interviews with executives and correspondents at television news networks
suggested that while the CBS cutbacks are the most extensive to date in
Baghdad, many journalists shared varying levels of frustration about placing
war stories onto newscasts. "I've never met a journalist who hasn't been
frustrated about getting his or her stories on the air," said Terry
McCarthy, an ABC News correspondent in Baghdad.

By telephone from Baghdad, Mr. McCarthy said he was not as busy as he was a
year ago. A decline in the relative amount of violence "is taking the
urgency out" of some of the coverage, he said. Still, he gets on ABC's
"World News" and other programs with stories, including one on Friday about
American gains in northern Iraq.

Anita McNaught, a correspondent for the Fox News Channel, agreed. "The
violence itself is not the story anymore," she said. She counted eight
reports she had filed since arriving in Baghdad six weeks ago, noting that
cable news channels like Fox News and CNN have considerably more time to
fill with news than the networks. CNN and Fox each have two fulltime
correspondents in Iraq.

Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, who splits his
time between Iraq and other countries, said he found his producers "very
receptive to stories about Iraq." He and other journalists noted that the
heated presidential primary campaign put other news stories on the back
burner earlier this year.

Ms. Logan said she begged for months to be embedded with a group of Navy
Seals, and when she came back with the story, a CBS producer said to her,
"One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform." In the follow-up
phone interview, Ms. Logan said the producer no longer worked at CBS. And in
both interviews, she emphasized that many journalists at CBS News are
pushing for war coverage, specifically citing Jeff Fager, the executive
producer of "60 Minutes." CBS News won a Peabody Award last week for a "60
Minutes" report about a Marine charged in the killings at Haditha.

On "The Daily Show," Ms. Logan echoed the comments of other journalists when
she said that many Americans seem uninterested in the wars now. Mr. McCarthy
said that when he is in the United States, bringing up Baghdad at a dinner
party "is like a conversation killer."

Coverage of the war in Afghanistan has increased slightly this year, with 46
minutes of total coverage year-to-date compared with 83 minutes for all of
2007. NBC has spent 25 minutes covering Afghanistan, partly because the
anchor Brian Williams visited the country earlier in the month. Through
Wednesday, when an ABC correspondent was in the middle of a prolonged visit
to the country, ABC had spent 13 minutes covering Afghanistan. CBS has spent
eight minutes covering Afghanistan so far this year.

Both Ms. Logan and Mr. McCarthy noted that more coalition soldiers were
killed in Afghanistan in May than in Iraq. No American television network
has a full-time correspondent in Afghanistan, although CNN recently said it
would open a bureau in Kabul.

"It's terrible," Ms. Logan said in the telephone interview. She called it a
financial decision. "We can't afford to maintain operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan at the same time," she said. "It's so expensive and the security
risks are so great that it's prohibitive."

Mr. Friedman said coverage of Iraq is enormously expensive, mostly due to
the security risks. He said meetings with other television networks about
sharing the costs of coverage have faltered for logistical reasons.

Journalists at all three American television networks with evening newscasts
expressed worries that their news organizations would withdraw from the
Iraqi capital after the November presidential election. They spoke only on
the condition of anonymity in order to avoid offending their employers.

War as 3D-chess in the dark and other strategic turns of phrase

Check out Rod Nordland's nifty piece in Newsweek for a guide to jingoistic -linguistics emerging from the Iraq morass.

Early on it was robust and muscular. "Shock and awe" set the tone; verbs were strong, simple and always in the active voice. But as the situation worsened, there was much less talk about "victory over antiregime elements" than about "achieving our mission" in Iraq...In the beginning there was much talk about how coalition troops were going to "kill or capture anti-Iraqi forces" and "destroy high-value targets." The enemy comprised "terrorists, criminals and regime dead-enders," supplemented by foreign jihadis. America's mission was to "create a secure and stable Iraq" or create the "conditions for security and stability" so that the "political process could move forward."

After the country's elections in January 2005, though, the "kill and capture" formulation fell into disfavor. The military began focusing on training the Iraqi police and military in what became known as "standing up the Iraqi security forces." Subsequent rhetoric also promised to "stand up" Iraqi ministries and local government agencies, as if they were all a bunch of pieces on the board that had toppled over (which is sort of what happened with the invasion).And later came a recognition, in a phrase uttered by one general after another and now heard right down to captains and literate lieutenants, that "the enemy gets a vote too."

Throughout it all, the American military continued to "own the battlespace" or at least "dominate the battlespace," even when a lot of people were getting killed in it by rival factions. And officers started routinely talking about distinguishing between "kinetic operations" (i.e., blowing people away) and "nonkinetic operations" (i.e., winning their hearts and minds—never a popular phrase in Iraq). The military command became concerned that the Iraqi government wasn't taking advantage of the "breathing space" that had been created by the relative decrease in violence. And at last count, I've heard no fewer than four generals, six colonels and innumerable junior officers talk about the "window of opportunity" that has been created for the Shiite-led government to reconcile with Sunnis.

US Army seeks criminal case against Associated Press shooter in Iraq

US Plans Case Against AP Photographer

By BRIAN MURPHY

NEW YORK (AP) - The U.S. military plans to seek a criminal case in an Iraqi court against a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press photographer from Fallujah but is refusing to disclose what evidence or accusations would be presented.

An Associated Press attorney on Monday strongly protested the decision, calling the U.S. military plans a "sham of due process." The journalist, Bilal Hussein, has already been imprisoned without charges for more than 19 months.

A public affairs officer notified the AP on Sunday that the military intends to submit a written complaint against Hussein that would bring the case into the Iraqi justice system as early as Nov. 29. Under Iraqi codes, an investigative magistrate will decide whether there are grounds to try Hussein, 36, who was seized in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on April 12, 2006.

A public affairs officer notified the AP on Sunday that the military intends to submit a written complaint against Hussein that would bring the case into the Iraqi justice system as early as Nov. 29. Under Iraqi codes, an investigative magistrate will decide whether there are grounds to try Hussein, 36, who was seized in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on April 12, 2006.

Dave Tomlin, associate general counsel for the AP, said the defense for Hussein is being forced to work “totally in the dark.”

The military has not yet defined the specific charges against Hussein. Previously, the military has pointed to a range of suspicions that attempt to link him to insurgent activity.

The AP rejects all the allegations and contends it has been blocked by the military from mounting a wide-ranging defense for Hussein, who was part of the AP’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo team in 2005.

Soon after Hussein was taken into custody, the AP appealed to the U.S. military to either release him or bring the case to trial — saying there was no evidence to support his detention. However, Tomlin said that the military is now attempting to build a case based on “stale” evidence and testimony that has been discredited. He also noted that the U.S. military investigators who initially handled the case have left the country.
“While we are hopeful that there could be some resolution to Bilal Hussein’s long detention, we have grave concerns that his rights under the law continue to be ignored and even abused,” said AP President and CEO Tom Curley.

“The steps the U.S. military is now taking continue to deny Bilal his right to due process and, in turn, may deny him a chance at a fair trial. The treatment of Bilal represents a miscarriage of the very justice and rule of law that the United States is claiming to help Iraq achieve. At this point, we believe the correct recourse is the immediate release of Bilal.”


Reporting from the point of view of the insurgents- is this tantamount to abetting the enemy? The military appears to think so. Watch this space.

Enemy ads for 'Coming Attractions' in a Theater of War

They are slick and sick. Iraqi insurgents apparently are waging a sophisticated psy-ops strike against off-duty American soldiers who spend their downtime online. According to Britain's Sky tv, mock-ups of over a dozen posters now circulate on the web, featuring lots of gore and a little glib wit. The aim is to demoralize the troops. "Do you want lies with that?" asks one, which purports to advertise "Fast Food Nation."
The campaign is unsubtle, but it recalls a spoof Star Wars poster (below) which was widely circulated by anti-war activists on the net in 2002-2003, prior to the invasion by the "coalition of the Willing". Gulf Wars II, Clone of the Attack. Funny at the time, but now it just makes me sigh. It looks decidedly dated now that Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Saddam are out of the picture.

The official American government poster, used for recruitment and patriotic boosterism, appears rather less slick. The war effort in Iraq ad Afghanistan now costs the US about $12 billion a month.

Beast of Baghdad

The Jerusalem press corps notes the departure of a familiar Farrell Beast, specifically Stephen Farrell, former Middle East correspondent for the London Times, who has just joined the New York Times as a veteran reinforcement for their Baghdad bureau. It recently underwent a major overhaul, with Dexter Filkins and John Burns back to civilization of sorts (although with car bombs planted in the UK, Burns' new patch of Londonistan is none too calm.)

This alpha male was famously kidnapped at gunpoint by bandits near Fallujah, then re-kidnapped by Baathist insurgents, interrogated as a suspected CIA spy and released after 8 hours. The kidnappers discovered that both their captives had been based in Israel, and things looked pretty hairy for awhile.

"See, not soldier. Just bald," the shaved-headed Farrell joked to the second lot of gunmen, to convince them there was no threat. Dinner then was served to Farrell and his petite female colleague, freelancer and fluent Arabic speaker Orly Halpern, before they were blindfolded and driven to Baghdad.

Steve manages to keep his head down a bit more these days, but has a great nose for news and a knack for danger.

Well, Farrell is back for more Iraq hi-jinks, full-on. He did not exactly slink away from the Holy Land hotspot. The send-off party at his Jerusalem apartment, for which he donned his ratty Iraq t-shirt, was classic. Sushi was served and the press corps was roasted with "Golden Bollocks" awards for ace blunders. The winner was a strapping Scandinavian hack who, when grilled by agents at the Ben Gurion airport, had managed to leave them sputtering and speechless. "Did you have contact with any Arabs?" they had asked, attempting to assess whether he was a threat to the Nation of Israel. "Well,Arabs, Jews, whatever... I can't really tell you guys apart," he had replied. Doh! They must have been rough with him.
James Hider, who is assuming Farrell's old beat at the London Times, is also an old Baghdad hand. It's a beastly business.