thedrifter
09-05-07, 09:17 AM
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
The Tank
Katie Couric in Iraq - Part I [W. Thomas Smith Jr.]
Last night was a preview. Tonight, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric hosts Part I of America in Iraq: The Road Ahead, a look at Iraq from her various vantage points there.
The segment leads with President Bush’s announcement in March 2003 that he had ordered coalition forces to begin striking military targets in Iraq. Then Katie hits the hard numbers:
Sixteen-hundred-thirty days after the president gave those orders, Saddam is long gone, but the war in Iraq goes on at an enormous cost: More than 3,700 American servicemen and women killed. More than 28,000 wounded. Estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths alone range from 70,000 to more than 80,000. The cost to American taxpayers: $567 billion.
She then rolls into troop numbers, the president’s “hope” that “the surge would turn the war around,” his appeal to Americans for more time, a promise of a “full accounting,” Gen. Petraeus’s forthcoming report, and – as she says – “the stakes could not be higher.” Lots of fiery, machine-gun rattling footage, maps, and today’s Government Accountability Office report, which she reminds us, says, “violence in Iraq remains high,” and the Iraqi government has not met 11 of 18 benchmarks.
Katie then takes a Black Hawk helicopter ride with Petraeus from – what appears to me to be – Landing Zone Washington in the Green Zone out to Fallujah. The two chat about the success in Al Anbar Province, specifically Fallujah and Ramadi, and she narrates a brief history of the region.
Lots of talk, as it should be, about what’s going wrong in Iraq – the government’s inability to provide basic services (electricity, water, trash pickup) – to what’s going right – high recruiting numbers for the army and police, the turnaround in Anbar, the dramatic reduction in violence, and the demand from all corners that the Iraqi government live up to its mandate.
In southern Iraq, where British troops have withdrawn from the city center of Basra to the airport, Katie calls it, “the surge in reverse.”
Overall, the segment is solid, militarily accurate, and surprisingly thorough considering the time allowed. She interviews Iraqis of various stripes, and among them there seems to be an underlying thread that the anti-war crowd (I’m not saying Katie’s a member) can no longer deny: As one tribal leader, Sheik Saddoun Al Bou’issa, explains, Al Qaeda “says they care about Islam … but they’re lying.” Thirty members of his tribe were killed by terrorists, and his greatest worry is that Al Qaeda will return if the Americans leave.
No mention, however, of some of the war's watershed events good and bad: Operation Steel Curtain (an enormously successful U.S. military operation in 2005 that, among other dynamics such as Al Qaeda’s brutal targeting of civilians, was key to the “Anbar Awakening.”), and the bombing of Samarra’s Golden Dome mosque in 2006, which spiked sectarian violence to previously unseen levels. Perhaps those things will be covered over the next three nights.
Ellie
The Tank
Katie Couric in Iraq - Part I [W. Thomas Smith Jr.]
Last night was a preview. Tonight, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric hosts Part I of America in Iraq: The Road Ahead, a look at Iraq from her various vantage points there.
The segment leads with President Bush’s announcement in March 2003 that he had ordered coalition forces to begin striking military targets in Iraq. Then Katie hits the hard numbers:
Sixteen-hundred-thirty days after the president gave those orders, Saddam is long gone, but the war in Iraq goes on at an enormous cost: More than 3,700 American servicemen and women killed. More than 28,000 wounded. Estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths alone range from 70,000 to more than 80,000. The cost to American taxpayers: $567 billion.
She then rolls into troop numbers, the president’s “hope” that “the surge would turn the war around,” his appeal to Americans for more time, a promise of a “full accounting,” Gen. Petraeus’s forthcoming report, and – as she says – “the stakes could not be higher.” Lots of fiery, machine-gun rattling footage, maps, and today’s Government Accountability Office report, which she reminds us, says, “violence in Iraq remains high,” and the Iraqi government has not met 11 of 18 benchmarks.
Katie then takes a Black Hawk helicopter ride with Petraeus from – what appears to me to be – Landing Zone Washington in the Green Zone out to Fallujah. The two chat about the success in Al Anbar Province, specifically Fallujah and Ramadi, and she narrates a brief history of the region.
Lots of talk, as it should be, about what’s going wrong in Iraq – the government’s inability to provide basic services (electricity, water, trash pickup) – to what’s going right – high recruiting numbers for the army and police, the turnaround in Anbar, the dramatic reduction in violence, and the demand from all corners that the Iraqi government live up to its mandate.
In southern Iraq, where British troops have withdrawn from the city center of Basra to the airport, Katie calls it, “the surge in reverse.”
Overall, the segment is solid, militarily accurate, and surprisingly thorough considering the time allowed. She interviews Iraqis of various stripes, and among them there seems to be an underlying thread that the anti-war crowd (I’m not saying Katie’s a member) can no longer deny: As one tribal leader, Sheik Saddoun Al Bou’issa, explains, Al Qaeda “says they care about Islam … but they’re lying.” Thirty members of his tribe were killed by terrorists, and his greatest worry is that Al Qaeda will return if the Americans leave.
No mention, however, of some of the war's watershed events good and bad: Operation Steel Curtain (an enormously successful U.S. military operation in 2005 that, among other dynamics such as Al Qaeda’s brutal targeting of civilians, was key to the “Anbar Awakening.”), and the bombing of Samarra’s Golden Dome mosque in 2006, which spiked sectarian violence to previously unseen levels. Perhaps those things will be covered over the next three nights.
Ellie