Antony Loewenstein

Oops:

A series of strategic errors by the Bush Administration in its War on Terror has left Iran holding virtually all the cards in the power play of the Middle East, according to a report by Britain’s most influential think-tank published today.

The report from the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House – entitled Iran, its neighbours and the regional crises – paints a bleak picture of the prospects for the United States and its Western allies as they try to put a cap on Iran’s nuclear programme.

It describes Iran as a state that sits with “confident ease” in the region and says, crucially, that Iran has replaced the United States as the most influential power in Iraq, able to influence events on the street and not just behind the security barricades of Baghdad’s Green Zone.

But the Bush administration, bless ‘em, still has a few tricks up its sleeve:

A Penn State study shows that the use of embedded reporters by major newspapers did affect the number and the type of stories published, resulting in more articles about the U.S. soldiers’ personal lives and fewer articles about the impact of the war on Iraqi civilians.

“The majority of war coverage in the study heavily emphasized the soldier’s experiences, of the war while downplaying the effects of the invasion on the Iraqi people,” said Andrew M. Lindner, a graduate student in sociology at Penn State.

“This study offers the first systematic documentation of the substantive content of the war coverage,” he noted. “Many critics of the embedded reporting program rely on individual anecdotes or stories, but no one else has completed a thorough analysis of the coverage itself.”

After all, who really cares about the Iraqi people? Post “liberation”, they really shouldn’t be complaining.

The Murdoch media empire believes in diversity, interactivity and vivid content.

As long as it’s produced through a particular ideological prism and reduces the chances of alternative companies thriving.

Regulate, regulate, regulate.

Hurricane Katrina and the Bush administration.

Two sides to a national disgrace.

Unfortunately for the Bush administration – and lone voices still advocating the merits of the Iraq war – it looks like the “liberated” Iraqis aren’t very grateful to the American people:

Over the last two years, Iraqi political values have become more secular and nationalistic, even though attitudes toward Americans have deteriorated, according to surveys of nationally representative samples of the population conducted in November 2004 and April 2006.

But at the same time, significantly more Iraqis support democratic values, including the separation of religion and politics. 

Opposition to the war has never been higher and even Iraqis themselves are being treated like second-class citizens in the US. Leadership is a dirty word in the world’s only superpower.

Zionists, your new talking points are ready:

Individuals seeking to arm themselves with relevant and accurate information to counter the recent barrage of anti-Semitic allegations and media bias now have a potent new ally.

Among regular guests on ITW are editors from Honest Reporting, the international organization dedicated to defending Israel from prejudice in the media. 

Somehow I suspect there won’t be much discussion about this or this.

Sometimes, we can wish to be a fly on the wall…

Muslims, myopia and Manji.

The Los Angeles Times uncovers relevant parallels between the Vietnam war and Iraq conflict. The intro par speaks for itself:

Documents show troops who reported abuse in Vietnam were discredited even as the military was finding evidence of worse.

After all, the US government isn’t very good at understanding political Islam and prefers to see any opposition, like in Vietnam, as “terrorists.”

12 compelling reasons to visit Bangladesh.

Globes Online concludes that, “Lebanon War II found Israel’s economy in good shape, but there will be a struggle over who pays.” How reassuring. And the real cost?

It can already be said that the current war caught the Israeli economy in a good opening position, which improves the likelihood of it getting back on a positive track. Therefore, the price we will have to pay is mainly in alternatives – increasing the defense budget at the expense of education and welfare – without an absolute price, such as a tax hike.

Israel’s bellicose military spending is literally choking the country to death. One in three children live under the poverty line and the gap between rich and poor is growing. And for what? To lose a war against Hizbollah?

It’s encouraging that Australia’s wannabe Prime Minister thinks the country should brace itself for a 50-year “war on those evil terrorists who want to take away our freedoms, large-screen TVs, Honda convertibles and Mars Bars.”

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, August 20:

The right won. The one clear result of this war is that the left suffered another fatal blow and the rightist camp was strengthened. The prevailing wisdom now is that not only is there nobody to talk to, there is nothing to talk about. Not only did we withdraw from Gaza and get Hamas and Qassams, we withdrew from Lebanon and got Hezbollah and rockets. The conclusion: no more withdrawals. Just before Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman translate this cognitive erosion into electoral achievements, one must ask: Where are they leading and where are we going?

The right has to come up with some answers now. All the despairing leftists and the new and confused enlistees in the right must stop and ask themselves: What exactly is the developing right actually offering? While in Syria, for example, they are thinking about the long term, and its president Bashar Assad has a vision for future generations to make Israel surrender, the Israeli discourse is characterized by total evasion of any long-term thinking. At most, the talk is about tomorrow. There’s a reason for this: the Israeli right has no solutions. For the long term, there are only two real possibilities: transfer, or an end to the occupation. The sane right still rejects transfer, and ending the occupation is not its way. Since there is no other way, the right cannot offer anything beyond the next war. The demand for long-term solutions, therefore, is an urgent one.