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In February, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld delivered a speech entitled “The Long War.” In it, he invoked the Cold War while at the same time laying out broad strategies to fight what could be a decades-long terrorist threat across the globe. How will these sorts of war-branding efforts affect how the conflict is ultimately remembered? Brooke puts the question to Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs.
The war in Iraq was temporarily displaced from the headlines this week by speculation about a U.S. invasion of Iran – speculation triggered by Seymour Hersh’s latest jaw-dropper in the New Yorker. While many have wondered about the true intentions of President Bush, others couldn’t help but question those of Hersh’s sources. Slate defense analyst Fred Kaplan joins Bob with some possible explanations.
The New Yorker article about dealing with the perceived Iranian threat made waves not just in Washington, but in foreign capitals as well. Brooke joins washingtonpost.com’s foreign press watcher Jefferson Morley for a roundup of the headlines. And she speaks with Knight Ridder correspondent Hannah Allam, who’s been watching the reaction from Tehran.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is reputed to be Al Qaeda’s #1 man in Iraq. Much of that credit is bestowed by Jihadist websites, but the Washington Post has reported that hyping Zarqawi is a mission of the U.S. military, too, which countered with the claim that 90% of Iraqi suicide attacks are carried out by foreign fighters recruited by Zarqawi. Juan Cole, who blogs about the Mideast at juancole.com, tells Brooke that’s unlikely.
Sometimes it's hard to get a grasp of what's going on in the current war, but history can be remarkably instructive. In the book The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker, Philip Knightley gives an expansive review of this history, and the place of journalists in it. He talks with Brooke about the lives and tales of war reporters
According to the Washington Post, Iraq's majority Shiite party has ordered the Health Ministry to stop counting execution-style shootings, and tally only deaths by bombing and other insurgent attacks. If true, it explains why the Post's recent numbers diverge so dramatically with those of Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari. Post reporter Ellen Knickmeyer tells Bob she was less surprised by the disparity in the death toll, than by the failure of other journalists to check it out.
The research group, Iraq Body Count, issued findings recently that show the rate of civilian deaths rising each year since the declared end of combat operations. According to the group, in the first year violent deaths occurred at a rate of 20 per day; year two, 31; in 2006 to date, 36. Since IBC relies entirely on media reports for its figures, we wondered how the Washington Post's assertion that the death toll is suppressed would affect its work. IBC spokesman Scott Lipscomb joins Brooke.
The cable news crawl has raised the question; is Iraq on the brink of civil war? Members of the Bush administration say no. The Iraqi Defense Minister has said that if civil war breaks out, it will never end. The Washington Post cited a body count of 1,300 directly related to sectarian violence in Iraq - but stopped short of drawing linguistic conclusions. So, who really gets to make the call? Bob explores the question with some of the experts.
