June 14, 2005
TOPIC: Eyewitness in Iraq: An Unembedded Report
GUESTS: Dahr Jamail, independent reporter who spent 8 months in Iraq.
On May 1, Britain's Sunday Times broke the story of the now-infamous “Downing Street Memo” - the minutes of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair's top advisers, showing that Blair had known, some eight months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, that a war not authorized by the United Nations would be illegal for British troops to take part in. The US self-censorship on the memo was so bad, according to the London Times, that “ombudsmen of The Washington Post, The New York Times and National Public Radio…have questioned the lack of attention the minutes have received from their organizations.” This week the Sunday Times published another smoking gun - the text of -- a leaked, extremely secret British Cabinet Office briefing paper dated July 23, 2002 which actually states: “"since regime change was illegal, it was 'necessary to create the conditions' which would make it legal."
While consumers of US corporate media rarely heard the war and its reasons being questioned, listeners of KPFK, Pacifica and other independent media got glimpses of the reality of the lead up to war, and, the invasion and occupation itself.
Today we will be hearing from two brave independent reporters who were regularly heard on Pacifica – Dahr Jamail, and Aaron Glantz. We begin with Dahr Jamail who spent a total of 8 months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent US journalists in the country. Dahr’s dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource and he began writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. His reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, and the Guardian to name just a few. Dahr's dispatches and hard news stories have been translated into Polish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese and Arabic. This year as he returned from Iraq, an independent video activist collective, Pepper Spray Productions, produced a documentary made from Dahr’s reports and photographs – Eye Witness in Iraq: Dahr Jamail – An Unembedded Report.
TOPIC: How America Lost Iraq
GUESTS: Aaron Glantz, Free Speech Radio News and Pacifica Radio
How America Lost Iraq, by Aaron Glantz is a first-hand account of this independent reporter’s experiences in Iraq over a two year period. It demonstrates how Glantz’s opinion of the US occupation of Iraq evolved over that time, and presents the voices of ordinary Iraqis.
[<<] [<] [>] [>>] [Shows are ordered by date -- Click on the links below] [home]
Click here for 2003 Show Information
Click here for 2004 Show Information
|
