Page 134 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

124 Chapter 5

government officials and political leaders," as he characterized the militias as
"security forces" that "claim de-facto territory and authority."'23
While reporting on U.S. financial and tactical support for ethnic militias and
"counterinsurgency'' units is not a major concern for mass media outlets, it has
been a major focus for Progressive-Left media. Arun Gupta is one of the most
ardent critics in the Progressive press of the terror groups. Gupta explains that,
when the Shiite government came into power, they cleared out many ex-Baathist
military commanders and replacing them with leaders from the Badr Brigade, a
militia that is an outgrowth of SCIRI, which gained substantial political repre-
The
sentation after the 2004 and 2005 e1e~tions.l~~ new government, Gupta re-
ported, began to sponsor a slew of paramilitaries: "they have all sorts of various
brigades, one called the Wolf Brigade, the Scorpion Brigade, the Lion Brigade,
another the Fearless Wamors. And they sound like death squads. And they are
death squads. They go around with masks. They're conducting raids, especially
throughout ~a~hdad.""~ Gupta also warned of the plan by U.S. National Secu-
rity Advisor Stephen Hadley and other American leaders to initiate a "Shia-on-
Shia" civil war, specifically through efforts to provoke the (Shia-comprised)
Badr militia to declare war on Moqtada al Sadr's (Shia-based) Mahdi militia.
The Mahdi army's stepped up attacks against U.S. military forces, which hit
new heights in 2006 and 2007, set the stage for the Bush administration's at-
tempts to provoke civil war within the Shia community. Gupta also criticized the
American media for ignoring the humanitarian implications of the plan to fo-
ment civil war in Iraq. Instead of considering the human consequences of a
"Shia-on-Shia" divide and conquer policy, the American media instead focused
"on the modalities of the [2007 U.S.] surge of 21,500 troops [sent to Baghdad]:
how many more troo s to deploy, what is their specific mission, how long can a
P
surge be sustained."'
At times, media editorializing was rather harsh of American support for
ethnic militias and "counterinsurgency" squads, although this represented more
the exception than the rule. The Washington Post, for example, condemned the
U.S. and Iraqi governments for supporting the groups: "of all the bloodshed in
Iraq, none may be more disturbing than the campaign of torture and murder be-
ing conducted by U.S. trained government police forces.. .Iraqi Interior Ministry
commando and police units have been infiltrated by two Shiite militias, which
have been conducting ethnic cleansing and rounding up Sunnis suspected of
supporting the insurgency."'27
In the Independent-Left media, skepticism was sustained on a more frequent
level. In Common Dreams, Tom Hayden criticized the U.S. for its war on "Sun-
nis and other 'diehards,"' as he argued that "[the U.S. prefers] a political settle-
ment that brings the nationalist resistance, including the Sunnis, into negotia-
tions rather than war."'28 In Z Magazine, Nicolas Davies drew attention to a UN
report suspicious of the militias linked to the Interior Ministry, highlighting the
"corpses [that] appear regularly in and around Baghdad and other areas. Most
bear signs of torture and appear to be victims of extra judicial execution^."'^^
Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post reported that Shiite and Kurdish mili-
tias loosely allied with the U.S. have initiated "a wave of abductions, assassina-