The Associated Press Channels Michael Moore
It simply isn't possible for the Associated Press to report anything about Iraq without turning the story into a slam against the Bush administration. Take this story: "Iraq Insurgency Larger Than Thought." The AP reports:
The Iraq insurgency is far larger than the 5,000 guerrillas previously thought to be at its core, U.S. military officials say, and it's being led by well-armed Iraqi Sunnis angry at being pushed from power alongside Saddam Hussein.Although U.S. military analysts disagree over the exact size, dozens of regional cells, often led by tribal sheiks and inspired by Sunni Muslim imams, can call upon part-time fighters to boost forces to as high as 20,000 — an estimate reflected in the insurgency's continued strength after U.S. forces killed as many as 4,000 in April alone.
The developing intelligence picture of the insurgency contrasts with the commonly stated view in the Bush administration that the fighting is fueled by foreign warriors intent on creating an Islamic state.
Guerrilla leaders come from various corners of Saddam's Baath Party, including lawyers' groups, prominent families and especially from his Military Bureau, an internal security arm used to purge enemies. They've formed dozens of cells.
So: the fact that most of the "insurgents" are left-over Baathists "contrasts with the commonly-stated view in the Bush adminstration that the fighting is fueled by foreign warriors intent on creating an Islamic state." Actually, the AP goes even farther, alleging that the Bush administration has tried to suppress this hot bit of intelligence:
Many in the U.S. intelligence community have been making similar points, but have encountered political opposition from the Bush administration, a State Department official in Washington said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.
Note the reliance, as usual, on an anonymous "State Department official."
But when, exactly, did the Bush administration deny that the Iraqi insurgents are, in large part, disgruntled Sunni Baathists? Isn't that exactly how the administration has described them from the beginning?
This interview that Donald Rumsfeld gave to NPR in August 2003 is, to my knowledge, typical of the way in which the administration has described the terrorist insurgents:
Interviewer: U.S. officials have described people resisting [the Coalition as] Iraqi dead-enders, the last supporters of Saddam Hussein, do you believe that is the case solely or do you believe that there is a broader group of insurgents with broader grievance against the U.S. and the U.S. occupation?Rumsfeld: I think that the truth is that it is a mixture of different elements. It is in some cases, it is the remnants of the Fedayeen Saddam and the SSO special people and the intelligence service and Saddam Hussein supporters. There also were -- we’re guessing somewhere between 80 and 100,000 criminals that were let loose out of the prisons in the country during the war by the Iraqi people and they’re out there and we know that some of the damage that’s being done are by those types of people -- criminals, looters and the like. We also know that there are Jihadists who came in from Syria for the most part but also from some other countries, that are in the country and are attacking the Coalition and the Iraqi infrastructure. So you have a mixture of these different things, it makes it difficult to define them and to be precise about it.
Now, how is this different from the anonymous State Department critique relied on by the AP? The insurgents are largely Saddamite "dead-enders," just as the AP's sources breathlessly report. So what point is the AP trying to make here?
Beyond reflexive anti-Bushism, I think two deeper messages are lurking in the AP's attack in the administration. First, the AP seems to suggest that there are virtually no foreign elements in Iraq at all:
Almost all the guerrillas are Iraqis, even those launching some of the devastating car bombings normally blamed on foreigners — usually al-Zarqawi.
So Zarqawi is a myth, and there are no foreigners--that is to say, no al Qaeda. This absurd claim by the Associated Press is designed, apparently, to further the dogmatic, obsessively-held (but obviously false) belief that al Qaeda can have nothing to do with Iraq.
But there is a second, even more sinister subtext to the AP's attack--the suggestion that the insurgents are really freedom fighters:
The [State Department] official and others told The Associated Press the guerrillas have enough popular support among nationalist Iraqis angered by the presence of U.S. troops that they cannot be militarily defeated."I generally like a lot of these guys," [a military official] said.
A closer examination paints most insurgents as secular Iraqis angry at the presence of U.S. and other foreign troops...Many guerrillas are motivated by Islam in the same way religion motivates American soldiers, who also tend to pray more when they're at war, the U.S. military official said.
He said he met Tuesday with four tribal sheiks from Ramadi who "made very clear" that they had no desire for an Islamic state, even though mosques are used as insurgent sanctuaries and funding centers.
"'We're not a bunch of Talibans,'" he paraphrased the sheiks as saying.
So the Iraqi terrorists aren't Baathist thugs, as the administration characterizes them; they are idealistic nationalists, supported by the Iraqi people, who tend to pray a lot because they are at war against a foreign oppressor.
That is the view being pushed by the Associated Press, and iit will appear in hundreds of newspapers tomorrow morning. But it certainly isn't the view of the Iraqis themselves, based on all of the poll data I've seen. It is, though, the opinion of someone who may influence the AP more than either the administration or the people of Iraq: Michael Moore, the intellectual leader of the Democratic Party:
The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win.
Moore's polemic is, in slightly cruder terms, the message the Associated Press is now trying to sell. How little time it has taken for Moore's hateful, extremist message to percolate through the Democratic Party and find expression in the country's principal news service.
