In late 2003, Dahr Jamail, a fourth generation Lebanese American journalist, left his comfortable job writing about mountain climbing for an Alaskan newspaper and went to Iraq to cover the war. He went by himself.
With only a laptop and Internet connection, Jamail entered a world of military injustice and “collateral damage” far beyond what the military or embedded journalists acknowledged, he said.
During the lecture held in the Student Activities Center on Apr. 24, he relayed accounts of soldiers with an “altered state of mind,” and blurred lines between politics and multinational corporations.
Jamail entered Iraq as in un-embedded, independent journalist with the goal of covering the full truth of the travesties committed by the U.S. military, he said.
In Iraq for eight months between November 2003 and February 2005, Jamail wrote about the “wave of propaganda” spread by the U.S. government to justify their involvement in Iraq as “successful.” Although not outright lies, the improvements made by the United States were in fact, he said, hurting the Iraqis more than they were helping. For instance, Jamail mentioned a widely used statistic by the government: the fact that about 30,000 Iraqis have returned home since the invasion. Jamail continued, and explained the facts behind this number.
The large trend in returned Iraqis was not because of improvements in society or the government. In fact, most Iraqis who returned home did so because of less noble reasons. Most simply ran out of money while others had visa problems. He added that a minimum of 4.9 million people was displaced from their homes with a other four million people in need of aid. Both numbers never mentioned by the government.
Jamail also recounted tales of the horrible things the American military did.
“At the time of the invasion, Fallujah welcomed the Americans,” Jamail said. But three weeks later, residents protested when U.S. forces occupied an elementary school. Classes were scheduled to begin the next day, and they wanted their children to attend school. The outcome of this protest was gunfire, and 17 people were killed, Jamail said.
That day also marked the birth of the resistance movement in Fallujah, he said, with hostilities escalating as the military brought in U.S. contractors to help. “I prefer to call them mercenaries because that’s what they are. They literally raped and pillaged.”
But the soldiers were not only ones to blame. Most were in an “altered state of mind.” They were soldiers too young for such a heavy burden.
The military was also lacking in various ways, Jamail said, by forcing soldiers to go out in raids without interpreters, maps or any sense of direction. Soldiers were told to round up suspects, and they had to come back with suspects, even when they raided the wrong house. “We were always pissed off and hated the Iraqis,” and we “assumed everyone was out to kill you,” said one soldier that Jamail said he interviewed.
In his lecture, Jamail also mentioned the close relationship between the government and corporations, citing Dick Cheney as the best example, with Halliburton.
He also mentioned his invited testimony before the World Tribunal on Iraq in June where he said he described the rampant torture and mistreatment of detainees, the lack of any semblance of a health care system in Iraq and the summary of “on the ground” conditions in Iraq after over two years of occupation.
Jamail has been recognized as an important media source and his reports have been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian, and Foreign Policy in Focus. He also reports for Democracy Now! and the BBC.
