Oooh, nuance!

Associated Press president Tom Curley says his news organization does not buy the government's argument that one of its photographers arrested in Iraq was working on behalf of the enemy, and he alleged the US is rounding up journalists in an attempt to control information.

"To say the least, we see things very differently," Curley commented dryly, regarding photographer Bilal Hussein, who was arrested two years ago and remains in military custody.

Noting that at least a dozen other Iraqi photographers have been detained or arrested, Curley stated, "It's impossible not to conclude that the words and pictures these journalists produced were considered unhelpful to the war effort and that their arrests would have served a broader strategy of information control."

Curley also called on journalists to demand that all the presidential candidates make a commitment to reversing a directive issued by Attorney General John Ashcroft shortly after September 11 that radically restricted the scope of the Freedom of Information Act.

Ashcroft's memo stated, "When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important records."

Curley told the National Press Club, "When a matter of public policy poses a straight-up choice between the public's rights of access to government and a government effort to infringe or even narrow those rights, journalists cannot pretend to be disinterested observers."

"This is the moment to make it clear to all the presidential candidates how important reversal of the Ashcroft directive is to us and to the people," Curley continued. "We need to ask the candidates at every opportunity ... whether they are willing to appoint an attorney general willing to follow the spirit as well as the letter of the law that protects the people's right to know what their government is doing."

In part, the roots of the disagreement between the Pentagon and White House over what is really happening in Iraq is historical. Senior military officers contend that the seeming fall-off in in-country violence not only has nothing to do with the increase in US force levels, but that the dampening of the insurgency that took hold last summer could have and would have taken place much earlier, within months of America's April 2003 occupation of Baghdad.

Moreover, these officers contend, the insurgency might not have put down roots in the country after the fall of Baghdad if it had not been for the White House and State Department - which undermined military efforts to strike deals with a number of Iraq's most disaffected tribal leaders. These officers point out that the first contact between high-level Pentagon officials and the nascent insurgency took place in Amman, Jordan, in August of 2003 - but senior Bush administration officials killed the talks.

At the center of these early talks was a group of Iraqis led by Sheikh Talal al-Gaood, a Sunni businessman with close ties to Anbar's tribal leaders. Gaood, who died of a heart ailment in March of 2006, was a passionate Iraqi patriot who feared growing al-Qaeda influence in his country. Speaking over coffee from his office in Amman in 2005, Gaood was enraged by the "endless mistakes" of the US leadership. "You [Americans] face a Wahhabi threat that you cannot even begin to fathom," he said at the time, and he derided White House "propaganda" about the role of Syria in fueling the insurgency.

Gaood, looking every bit the former Ba'athist - complete with suspenders and Saddam Hussein-like mustache was particularly critical of what he called "the so-called counter-insurgency experts among Washington policymakers who think they know Iraq but don't." As he argued: "The guys who come through here, very educated, come in their brown robes and say they are going to Iraq to kill the Americans. They are not Syrians. They are Wahhabis. They are from Saudi Arabia. But if you talk to American officials, it is like they don't exist."

WASHINGTON, Sep 12 (IPS) - In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

Fallon's derision toward Petraeus reflected both the CENTCOM commander's personal distaste for Petraeus's style of operating and their fundamental policy differences over Iraq, according to the sources.

The policy context of Fallon's extraordinarily abrasive treatment of his subordinate was Petraeus's agreement in February to serve as front man for the George W. Bush administration's effort to sell its policy of increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq to Congress.

In a highly unusual political role for an officer who had not yet taken command of a war, Petraeus was installed in the office of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, in early February just before the Senate debated Bush's troop increase. According to a report in The Washington Post Feb. 7, senators were then approached on the floor and invited to go McConnell's office to hear Petraeus make the case for the surge policy.

Fallon was strongly opposed to Petraeus's role as pitch man for the surge policy in Iraq adopted by Bush in December as putting his own interests ahead of a sound military posture in the Middle East and Southwest Asia -- the area for which Fallon's CENTCOM is responsible.

The CENTCOM commander believed the United States should be withdrawing troops from Iraq urgently, largely because he saw greater dangers elsewhere in the region. "He is very focused on Pakistan," said a source familiar with Fallon's thinking, "and trying to maintain a difficult status quo with Iran."

By the time Fallon took command of CENTCOM in March, Pakistan had become the main safe haven for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda to plan and carry out its worldwide operations, as well as being an extremely unstable state with both nuclear weapons and the world's largest population of Islamic extremists.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is expected to tell President Bush to cut the US footprint in Iraq next year by almost half, according to an article in Friday's (registration-restricted) LA Times.

Officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace will convey concerns by the chiefs that keeping in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq into 2008 will "severely strain" the US armed forces.

This assessment, the paper says, may sow discord with top Bush officials and Bush's top commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, who continue to push for more troops.

Interestingly, Pace, who was appointed by President Bush, will not be reappointed when his term comes up in September.

Petraeus will likely back the White House view that a continued surge is required to produce "political progress" in Iraq.

"Pace's recommendations reflect the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who initially expressed private skepticism about the strategy ordered by Bush and directed by Petraeus, before publicly backing it," according to the Times.

The United States must finish the job in Iraq and demonstrate that it will never again abandon its soldiers and its friends.

Not long ago, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post wrote a column about Iraq headlined “As in Vietnam, Dereliction of Duty All over Again.” The Vietnam analogy has been part of the Iraq war story since the fighting started (in fact, since before it started). The Bush administration often deals with its critics by ignoring them. This time it can’t. Too much rides on the president looking these critics in the eye and telling them: Damned right this is Vietnam all over again. Only this time we will not get scared and walk out in the middle. This time we will stand fast and repair a piece of the American psyche that has been damaged and hurting ever since we ran from Vietnam in disgrace way back in April 1975.

American character is on the line. For the sake of this nation--of its good name, its big heart, the sacrifices of its many brave defenders, the genius of its creators, of its greatness, in short--conservatives had better not lose this fight.

The administration was wrong to let Americans get the idea that Iraq would be easy. But it was right to fight. And because Iraq is exactly Vietnam all over again, our eventual victory will not only be good for Iraq, the Middle East, and peace on earth. It will repair American self-respect. And it will turn the Friends of Cowardice, the U.S. Mothers for Despair, and all their allied groups back into the peripheral players they always used to be in this country--until Vietnam.