Stickdog, you are entitled to your opinion, of course, whether I or anyone else agrees or disagrees with it. But to assert something or other as fact without having the facts is unwise. In fact, doing so is foolish.
You wrote:
"I'm not sure what your point is. My point is that the new New Yorker article served the US military's PR interests far, far better than the original leaked report and infinitely better than (photo)"My point was to counter your argument because I see Maass' article quite differently than you do; I see it as a revealing look at what transpired in the Iraqi square that day, reported by someone who was there, who interviewed several people long after the fact in order to write his article as accurately as possible. In short: You see this article as disinformation and I do not. In fact, I see it as revealing of the lengths the media went to to maintain the deceitful illusion most reported it to be: a literal but iconic overthrow of their dictator by the Iraqi people. And also to point out the foolishness of your unfounded allegations.
Which I will now continue doing.
First, you're judging the impact of a report neither you nor I have read. And it seems you've ignored all the points I've raised about why the New Yorker article does not serve as 'disinfo,' but is fairly good reporting, gathering information from individuals actively involved or who were present at the time as bystanders.
You wrote:
"Since both articles are based 100% on information the military itself provided, why is this surprising?" This is not factual, as I just explained.
Perhaps that is true of the 2004
Nation article, but that assertion is certainly not true of the New Yorker/ProPublica story. How you come to this conclusion is beyond me, considering others were interviewed for the New Yorker article. Let's not forget that Maass was present in the square that day:
"My understanding of events at the time was limited. I had no idea why the battalion went to Firdos rather than to other targets. I didn’t know who had decided to raise the American flag and who had decided to take down the statue, or why. And I had little awareness of the media dynamics that turned the episode into a festive symbol of what appeared to be the war’s finale. In reality, the war was just getting under way. Many thousands of people would be killed or injured before the Bush Administration acknowledged that it faced not just “pockets of dead-enders” in Iraq, as Rumsfeld insisted, but what grew to be a full-fledged insurgency. The toppling of Saddam’s statue turned out to be emblematic of primarily one thing: the fact that American troops had taken the center of Baghdad. That was significant, but everything else the toppling was said to represent during repeated replays on television—victory for America, the end of the war, joy throughout Iraq—was a disservice to the truth. Yet the skeptics were wrong in some ways, too, because the event was not planned in advance by the military."You wrote:
"Furthermore, my point is that the New Yorker reporter never asked any hard questions about why the psy-ops core claimed this event as its greatest coup in the Iraqi War to date in 2004 when the new, officially sanctioned story claimed no psy-op involvement (except to warn the spectators to move back when the statue was about to fall)."First, you'll have to show me anywhere in either article that the psyops corps claimed this event was "...its greatest coup in the Iraqi War to date..." because I didn't read any such thing in either.
It seems you haven't carefully read either article or my last post, in which I quoted from Maass' article: "Staff Sergeant Brian Plesich, the leader of an Army psychological-operations team, arrived at Firdos after the sledgehammer-and-rope phase had begun.
He (Plesich)
saw the American flag go up and had the same reaction as Kuhlman: get an Iraqi flag up. Plesich, whom I interviewed last year, told his interpreter to find an Iraqi flag. The interpreter waded into the crowd, and soon an Iraqi flag was raised." And from
The Nation article:
"Someone produced an Iraqi flag, and a sergeant in the psychological operations unit quickly replaced the American flag."And it wasn't a psyops unit that was involved in keeping people safe when the statue came down:
"Before signing off, Hummer instructed McCoy to make sure no one got killed by falling debris.
McCoy then issued a brief order to Lewis: “Do it.” He also told Lewis not to get anyone killed in the process." They were Marines. Maass followed McCoy's unit into the square.
To repeat, the psyops unit's involvement was limited to seeing the American flag removed from the statue and replaced with an Iraqi flag and broadcasting in Arabic to warn the people to keep away.
You criticize Maass for not asking any hard questions about who the people were who had gathered in the square but he did report that: "Just after 5 P.M. local time, Fox News
showed about a dozen Iraqis walking into the empty square; these were the first civilians on the site. They were followed and surrounded by an increasing number of journalists; within a minute of the Iraqis arriving at the statue’s base, journalists appear to nearly outnumber them." He was there. He saw and accurately reported the composition of the crowd.
Obviously he could not ask "...any hard questions about why the psy-ops core claimed this event as its greatest coup..." because that never happened. As I said earlier, no such claim was ever made in either article. So where'd you get that from?
And why is it you do not ask these hard-hitting questions of Zucchino, in his Nation article from 2004?
I'd suggest you read Maass' article again, this time putting aside your preconceived bias and if you're capable, with an open mind. Perhaps you'll see it differently. Perhaps you'll comprehend it not to be revisionist, not a re-write of history, but a revealing report about an incident that carried tremendous psychological impact that was spontaneous, unplanned, and one which the media helped to propagandize dramatically.
You wrote:
"If your point here is to claim that we do not have sufficient evidence to prove from the information the military itself has released and the press' dutiful reporting of such that this event was premeditatedly orchestrated by the US military, then I cannot question your analysis (only your motivation)."Glad you
finally got that.
As to my motivation... I rarely have time to comment and you happened to take issue with my understanding of Maass' report and in doing so you have, up to and including your last post, to which this is a reply, been factually inaccurate in nearly everything you've written. Just setting the record straight. Nothing more nefarious on my part than striving for truth from a fellow RI fan. I should ask you: "What's your motivation in being so factually inaccurate?"
While I feel sure ProPublica is a truly independent news service, I know little about The Nation other than it is left-leaning. I doubt I've read it more than a dozen times in my life.
Lastly, how is it that you asked Luther this about Maass if you understood what you read? :
"Wasn't he embedded in Iraq? If so, he must be very used to this sort of shit." Anyone reading your question can only come to either of two conclusions:
1) That you did not read the Maass article, or 2) your reading comprehension is very poor.
For your pleasure (or consternation):
"Peter Maass, in collaboration with ProPublica and The New Yorker, reveals the exact story behind the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein at Firdos Square in Baghdad on April 9, 2003.
His story shows how the American media exaggerated the importance and context of the toppling, conveying an erroneous sense of victory in a war that was just beginning."
http://www.propublica.org/article/the-toppling-saddam-statue-firdos-square-baghdadProPublica
podcast with Peter Maass
Video of toppling
But before I go, this to my dear friend Nordic:
On Edit: Removed "not" from this sentence: First, you're judging the impact of a report neither you nor I have not read
