Dahr Jamail's Weblog

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Dahr Jamail's Weblog
'Dahr Jamail's Weblog' contains Dahr's personal log, opinions and commentary from the Middle East.

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February 08, 2007

Help Support Continuing Middle East Independent Reportage

Friends, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Jeff Pflueger. I've worked closely with Dahr since nearly the beginning of his reporting from the Middle East, using my skills on the web to reach as many people as we can with Dahr's important journalism.

As you know, Dahr has contributed invaluably towards informing the international community about the realities in Iraq.

What you might not know, is that it is primarily because of your support that this was possible. So thank you!

Dahr has been getting the story right on Iraq when the U.S. corporate media reporting was so wrong. While most of the U.S. media were practicing “hotel journalism” or embedding themselves with U.S. troops, Dahr went out into the streets to get the stories that weren't being told.

Now, for two years in a row, Dahr has been honored with two of the top ten stories of the year from Project Censored. Just this year, he was honored with the #1 story of the hottest stories of the year from Inter Press Service. Dahr has appeared on innumerable radio and tv programs, and has toured internationally giving over 100 presentations to packed auditoriums.

He would not have been able to achieve any of this without your support.

Now, with the situation in the Middle East more critical than ever, we need to reach even more Americans with the realities on the ground in the MidEast.

That's why I plan to join Dahr on his next assignment to the Middle East. As a photojournalist who has worked for the New York Times, National Geographic Adventure and other major U.S. periodicals, I will help Dahr tell his stories with compelling images. As Dahr's webmaster and multi-media producer, I will be able to put Dahr's reporting and my images into exciting formats directly from the field. We anticipate that these multimedia productions will reach far more people in this age of YouTube and streaming video than a text-only story could.

If we can raise the funding, our plans are to spend a minimum of one month reporting from different areas in the Middle East this spring, longer if the funding is adequate.

The Dahr Jamail team is officially bumping it up a notch
You are formally invited to come along for the ride.

But we need your support for this coming project.

With two of us going loaded with lots of equipment, our expenses are considerably more than what they have been in the past.

For those of you that have contibuted generously in the past, thank you for supporting Dahr's work.

For those of you who follow Dahr's work, but have never donated, if you each gave as little as $5.00, we'd would reach our funding goals for this new and exciting project.

Any amount is helpful, we welcome the help.

There are three ways that you can choose to donate:

OnLine

Visit the website here

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/donate

And choose what you can give. Any amount helps.

By Mail

Donations can also be mailed directly to:

Dahr Jamail
P.O. Box 9095
Berkeley, CA 94709

Tax Deductable Donations

Checks for tax-deductible donations should be made out to "International Media Project", and please write "Dahr Jamail" in the memo line. Mail Checks to:

International Media Project/Dahr Jamail
1714 Franklin St. #100-251
Oakland, CA 94612

Thank you for your support of Dahr's work.

Sincerely,

Jeff Pflueger
(Webmaster, DahrJamailIraq.com)

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 11:30 PM

January 28, 2007

Lt. Ehren Watada

I would like to bring your attention to a story I covered last August about 1st Lt. Ehren Watada. The story covered his decision not to deploy to Iraq and a speech he gave at the Veteran's for Peace National Convention in Seattle last August. The full text of his speech can be read here

Continue reading "Lt. Ehren Watada"

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 10:23 PM

December 14, 2006

Child Victims of Violence

Here is the text and photos I just received from a doctor friend in Baghdad:

"This is 20 month-old Iraqi baby girl, who was severely injured and mutilated, in a blast by a car bomb in Al-Sadr City 21 days ago,she lost her two eyes.

"Her name is Shams-means sun in Arabic-... well not anymore, her mother was killed during the accident. Shams lies now in a surgical specialty hospital in Baghdad, and as we live in these terrible conditions in Baghdad she has not much chance to get any proper medical care...

"She is an innocent element amid this turmoil. I have a kid almost the same age and I feel aching pain inside for her. Shams was sent for my consulatation for her but I could do nothing. If she could make it she would live with a broken soul forever. Who could bring back her cherubic childish smile again? I hope that the criminal who did this sees part of his accomplishment."

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 11:14 PM

December 13, 2006

The Oil Factor in the Iraq Study Group (Interview)

Interview with Dori Smith on Talk Nation Radio, December 13, 2006

http://talknationradio.com/

Journalist Dahr Jamail speaks about the reality of the Iraq Study Group Report and what is going on in Iraq today: US support for death squad militias, US air attacks, and the steady intensification of the violence. If US forces withdrew there may be a potential for the Iraqis to contain the worst perpetrators of violence, but without a major policy change the potential for worsening chaos and wider war persists.

Continue reading "The Oil Factor in the Iraq Study Group (Interview)"

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 07:29 PM

December 11, 2006

"Today Is Better than Tomorrow"

Tomgram: Jamail, Emails from the Front Lines of Iraqi Daily Life

Right now, we have on the table a "possible exit strategy" from Iraq -- James A. Baker's Iraq Study Group report -- that, once you do the figures, doesn't get the U.S. even close to halfway out the door by sometime in 2008; and that report is already being rejected by the Republican and neocon hard right; by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who continues to plug for some form of "victory" ("The enemy must be defeated...") on his last lap in Iraq, while still flaying the media for only reporting the "bad news"; by a President who is still on the IED-pitted road to success ("Not only do I know how important it is to prevail, I believe we will prevail..."), has called for three other reviews of Iraq policy (by the Pentagon, National Security Council, and White House) in an attempt to flood Washington with competing recommendations, and is probably on the verge of "surging" 15,000-20,000 more U.S. troops into Baghdad.

All sides in this strange struggle in Washington would add up to so much political low comedy if the consequences in Iraq and the Middle East, the oil heartlands of our increasingly energy-hungry planet, weren't so horrific. As Andrew Bacevich, historian, former military man, and author of The New American Militarism, wrote recently in the Boston Globe, Iraq's many contradictions "render laughably inadequate the proposals currently on offer to save Iraq and salvage American honor. Dispatch a few thousand additional US troops into Baghdad? Take another stab at creating a viable Iraqi army? Lean on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to make ‘hard decisions?' One might as well spit on a bonfire."

Consider the strangeness of it all from the Washington perspective. The Iraq Study Group essentially wants to infiltrate the already largely sectarian army the Bush administration has set up in Iraq, an army incapable of handling its own logistics or, in many cases, planning its own missions, with 10,000-20,000 American advisors to do what the U.S. military has been unable to accomplish these last years. That largely Shiite (and Kurdish force) is already a motor for further violence. Adding vast numbers of (still largely untrained, surely resented, and undoubtedly resentful) advisors to it will only ensure that the "Iraqi Army" remains functionally a thoroughly recalcitrant American one into the distant future. This is the functional definition of a failed strategy from the get-go, but given the geostrategic la-la land that George Bush and Dick Cheney inhabit, it now passes for "realism" in our national capital.

For a touch of actual realism, it seemed reasonable to turn to those who have been living out the results of Washington's mad plans these last years -- actual Iraqis. Independent journalist Dahr Jamail, who has written regularly for Tomdispatch on our occupation of Iraq and, from 2003 to 2005, covered it in person, offers us at least a glimpse of the nightmare world that George Bush's "cakewalk" into Iraq inflicted on those in its path. Here are some of the people "stuff" happened to. Tom

"Today Is Better than Tomorrow" Iraq as a Living Hell By Dahr Jamail

The situation in Iraq has reached such a point of degradation and danger that I've been unable to return to report -- as I did from 2003 to 2005 -- from the front lines of daily life. Instead, in these last months, I have found myself in a supportive role, facilitating the work of some of my former sources, who remain in their own war-torn land, to tell their hair-raising tales of the new Iraq. While relying on my Iraqi colleagues to report the news, which we then publish at Inter Press Service and my website, I continue to receive emails from others in Iraq, civilian and soldier alike.

What I know from these emails is that the articles on Iraq you normally read in your local newspaper, even when, for instance, they cover the disintegration of the Iraqi health system or the collapse of the economy, are providing you, at best, but a glimpse of what daily life there is now like. After all, who knows better what's happening than those who are living it?

Continue reading ""Today Is Better than Tomorrow""

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 04:16 PM

August 29, 2006

"DahrJamailIraq now video podcasting Mosaic"

Mosaic now available as iTunes vodcast (video podcast) at DahrJamailIraq

- Get Mosaic daily into itunes and your video ipod!

Dahr Jamail Iraq is proud to announce a video podcast (vodcast) of
LinkTV's Mosaic. Now you can receive daily English translations of
Middle East Television news automatically and watch it at your leisure either on your computer or on your video ipod.

Mosaic is a vital tool in understanding issues in the Middle East from news sources outside of US government influence and US corporate media bias.

For the mosaic homepage/information, click here

For the feed link, click here

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 06:38 PM

August 24, 2006

"The World Just Sat By," An Interview with Dahr Jamail

By: Christopher Brown
Orginally published at Ohmy News
August 23, 2006

Dahr Jamail is an award-winning, independent journalist who reported live from Baghdad for eight months beginning in 2003. He is considered one of the best sources on the War in Iraq. Recently he returned to The Middle East where he filed stories from Lebanon and Syria. While he was in Damascus, the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah began. Jamail left immediately for Beirut and sent daily dispatches from his Iraq-dispatches website. I had the chance to speak to Jamail about what he saw during this 34-day conflict in the middle East.

Continue reading ""The World Just Sat By," An Interview with Dahr Jamail"

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 09:42 PM

August 15, 2006

Thanks for your Contributions

We would like to thank everyone who contributed funding towards Dahr Jamail's recent trip to the Middle East. The following are just a few of the highlights of Dahr's reporting which your generous donations made possible. We hope that everyone who donated feels a sense of pride in that they assisted in getting this information out to the world.

Sincere thanks,
Webteam and Dahr Jamail

Continue reading "Thanks for your Contributions"

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 10:19 PM

August 10, 2006

Destruction, Death, and Drastic Measures

The Damage in Lebanon -- and Beyond

The idea that you can solve social and political problems militarily from the air is, on the face of it, ludicrous. The historical record is filled with the dead dreams of air power solutions to ground-based problems. But that stops no one.

Just yesterday, for instance, as part of the new American operation to -- somehow -- seize control of the situation in civil-war wracked Baghdad, American forces launched an attack on Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi militia in the capital's heavily populated Shiite slum, Sadr City. As a Bloomberg News Service piece put headlined its piece: "Iraq, U.S. Forces Raid Sadr City to Calm Baghdad." Aha. "Calm," it seems, was to be imposed not just by ground troops but from the air by helicopter assault (though even the best accounts of the operation offer few details on just what those helicopters did). We do know that this calming raid managed to kill three people, including a woman and a child, wound others, and destroy three homes. It also left the Iraqi Prime Minister a good deal less than calm. Simply firing into urban areas this way should be considered inconceivable rather than, as now, a problem-solving approach to the disaster that is Baghdad.

In Lebanon, here's what "precision" bombing seems to mean. "On Saturday, an Israeli offense consisting of more than 250 air attacks dropped 4,000 bombs within seven hours… The total death toll from the attacks is approaching 1,000. One third of those deaths are from children under 12." I don't know who is counting all this or whether such figures are accurate, but there can be no question that parts of Lebanon are being turned into little more than rubble; that with main highways and bridges destroyed, unmanned aerial drones and F-16s overhead, airports shut down, and the coastline blockaded, supplies are not arriving; that hospitals are at the edge of closing, and that a staggering percentage of the country of only 3.8 million are now refugees -- abroad, in Syria, or simply on the move and homeless in their own country. Christian areas of Lebanon are now being bombed -- for this, see a vivid, and horrifying post by Juan Cole -- and the bombing campaign is widening with, for instance, ever more central areas of Beirut being hit. It seems that even some Israeli pilots are having qualms about the targets being offered. The message is, I suppose, precise enough, even if the bombs and missiles aren't: Nowhere is safe; there will be no refuge. In Baghdad as in Lebanon, this, it seems, is where the Bush "crusade" has indeed left us all. It's a place without pity or, evidently, a shred of mercy. It is no place for diplomacy, nor even for words (so much more precise and yet frustrating than bombs). Hezbollah's "words" are, of course, its rockets which land indiscriminately across northern Israel.

And our President? He's evidently unfazed by the spreading chaos in the Middle East (and perhaps sooner or later in our wider world). Recently, Steve Holland, a Reuters correspondent, took a more than vigorous bike ride with Bush around his Crawford vacation home. ("'Riding helps clear my head, helps me deal with the stresses of the job,' a sweat-soaked Bush said after an hour-and-20-minute ride that shot his heart rate up to 177 beats per minute at the top of one climb.") Holland reports that the occasion for the ride was the President's sense that "a U.N. resolution on southern Lebanon was essentially complete." George Bush, it turns out, does not bike in silence. Here's an example of his bike-riding exclamations. Think of it as well as a presidential Rorschach test: "'Air assault!' he yelled as he started one of two major climbs, up Calichi Hill, which he named for the white limestone rock from which it is formed."

Dahr Jamail, who has in the past covered the American war in Iraq for Tomdispatch, gives us a sense of what the view from Damascus (and Lebanon) looks like at the moment – of what it actually means to shout "Air assault!" in the Middle Eastern equivalent of a crowded room. Tom

Destruction, Death, and Drastic Measures
By Dahr Jamail

Damascus, Syria -- "I care about my people, my country, and defending them from the Zionist aggression," said a Hezbollah fighter after I'd asked him why he joined the group. I found myself in downtown Beirut sitting in the backseat of his car in the liquid heat of a Lebanese summer. Sweat rolled down my nose and dripped on my notepad as I jotted furiously.

Read More

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 03:55 AM

August 05, 2006

Black Beaches in Lebanon

July 29, 2006

Towards the beginning of the war, Israeli air strikes target five of the six oil storage tanks at the electrical plant in El-Jiye city. El-Jiya is a small coastal city roughly 20 miles south of Beirut. The prevailing winds blow towards the north, up the coast, so this translates into most of the coast of Lebanon north of that city now being smeared with 50,000 tons of fuel oil.

Continue reading "Black Beaches in Lebanon"

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 09:08 AM

Images from Lebanon

I have taken many photographs of different aspects of the conflict in Lebanon.

To view:
Israeli Air Strikes Targeting Lebanese Red Cross
Click here

To view:
Scenes from Shelter in Qana where on July 30, Israeli air strikes killed over 60 civilians, 37 of whom were children, as they slept in a shelter.
Click here

Continue reading "Images from Lebanon"

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 08:27 AM

August 02, 2006

"You reach a place where you look at life like it's nothing."

Mother Jones Website
News: Daily Dispatches from the War-Torn Lebanese Capital
By Dahr Jamail

Tuesday, August 1, 2006

Walking into the scene of the massacre yesterday in Qana felt like entering a bottomless pit of despair. A black whole of sadness, regardless of the fact that the bodies of the women, 37 young children, the elderly, and what few men were there had been removed.

Continue reading ""You reach a place where you look at life like it's nothing.""

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 07:10 AM

July 31, 2006

"My wife and children are injured, and we have nowhere to go."

Mother Jones Website
News: Daily Dispatches from the War-Torn Lebanese Capital
By Dahr Jamail

Monday, July 31, 2006

Returning from traveling to Sidon on Saturday, I was emotionally exhausted, physically sick from what I saw.

Continue reading ""My wife and children are injured, and we have nowhere to go.""

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 08:59 PM

July 29, 2006

Chest-Beating -- While Losing the War

Mother Jones Website
News: Daily Dispatches from the War-Torn Lebanese Capital
By Dahr Jamail

Friday, July 28, 2006

I'd been wondering why there have been fewer war planes buzzing over Beirut the last several days. Even Dahaya, the utterly devastated southern area of the capital, has been bombed less--while still receiving a good pounding most afternoons, there have clearly been fewer bombs echoing across the capital.

Israel, after claiming to have control of the small southern city of Bint Jbail, merely a few kilometers inside Lebanon, lost at least 13 soldiers there recently. The official count of nine deaths is widely believed here to be false.

The fog of war, of course, is thick.

Continue reading "Chest-Beating -- While Losing the War"

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 05:35 PM

July 27, 2006

"War is the total failure of the human spirit."

Mother Jones Website
News: Daily Dispatches from the War-Torn Lebanese Capital
By Dahr Jamail

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Ah, the joys of reporting on a shoe-string budget! I've been working the last few days with a freelance photographer from Holland, Raoul. It's always helpful to team up—both for the companionship and to split costs. Sometimes it's necessary, working in a war zone in a foreign country where you don't speak the language well enough to get by on your own, to hire a driver, interpreter, and fixer. So costs add up fast, on top of the hotel, feeding, and phones, which are always necessary.

Continue reading ""War is the total failure of the human spirit.""

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 08:49 PM

"Everything in my life is destroyed now, so I will fight them."

Mother Jones Website
News: Daily Dispatches from the War-Torn Lebanese Capital
By Dahr Jamail

July 26, 2006

"I am in Hezbollah because I care," the fighter, who agreed to the interview on condition of anonymity, told me. "I care about my people, my country, and defending them from the Zionist aggression." I jotted furiously in my note pad while sitting in the back seat of his car. We were parked not far from Dahaya, the district in southern Beirut which is being bombed by Israeli warplanes as we talk.

Continue reading ""Everything in my life is destroyed now, so I will fight them.""

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 01:34 PM

July 24, 2006

"Aren't people seeing all of this?"

Hundreds of Lebanese refugees languish in a city park in downtown Beirut. Fleeing southern Lebanon, as well as south Beirut, thousands have already made their way through this camp as they are farmed out to schools, abandoned buildings and anyone willing to take them in.

Continue reading ""Aren't people seeing all of this?""

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 09:16 PM

July 22, 2006

War

War savages everything.

As Lebanon bleeds and the humanitarian crisis there deepens among the craters left by Israeli bombs, those who can have fled-mostly to Syria.

Continue reading "War"

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 08:49 AM

July 20, 2006

Collectively Punishing Lebanon

An acquaintance of mine in Lebanon just sent me this email:

"A friend of mine just called and told me of a massacre: civilian building destroyed in Tyre by Israeli aggression. There, Zouhair Edde's mother has been killed. Rayaan Qudsi has been killed along with her two daughters. This is a conservative number of martyrs thus far. This building is where refugees typically hide."

This is but an infinitesimal example of what is being carried out by the Israeli military apparatus against the civilian population of Lebanon on an hourly basis.

Continue reading "Collectively Punishing Lebanon"

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 05:51 PM

July 14, 2006

"This is a big disaster for the Lebanese."

Once again the U.S. government has refused to condemn the Israeli invasion of Lebanon as the bombs fall on Beirut, killing scores of civilians.

Continue reading ""This is a big disaster for the Lebanese.""

Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 12:19 PM