The Ongoing War on Truth in Iraq

** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **

By Dahr Jamail
t r u t h o u t Perspective

Tuesday 18 April 2006

/*The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from
which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been
tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad
communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far
worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and
inefficient than the public knows ... We are today not far from a
disaster.*-- T.E. Lawrence (a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia), The Sunday
Times, August 1920/

On Monday, April 17, my sources in Baghdad reported fierce fighting in
the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of the capital city, as well as fighting in
the al-Dora neighborhood. One source, who lives in the predominantly
Sunni area of Adhamiya, had been telling me the situation was
disintegrating for days leading up to this. There had been clashes every
day for four days leading up to yesterday's huge clash there, with
sporadic fighting between Sunni resistance fighters and members of the
two largest Shia militias. The armed wing of the Supreme Council for
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Badr Organization, and Muqtada al-Sadr's
Mehdi Army have been launching ongoing attacks against fighters in the
neighborhood. There is a shorter version of this description.

Civil war.

Yet we don't hear it described as such in the corporate media, nor from
the Cheney administration. Their propaganda insists that Iraq is not yet
in a civil war.

But in Adhamiya, every night now for several weeks roads have been
closed with tires, trunks of date palm trees and other objects to
prevent "kidnappers and Shia death squads" from entering the area,
according to one source, whom I'm keeping anonymous for security reasons.

His description of the fierce fighting in his neighborhood is quite
different from the reporting of it in mainstream outlets.

"Sunday night at 12:30 a.m. clashes started just like on the four
previous nights, but it was very heavy and from different directions. It
was different from the other nights in quantity and quality; it was
truly like the hell which I haven't seen even in the battles of the war
between Iraq and Iran during the eighties," wrote my source. He added
that mortars and rocket-propelled grenades were used, and so much
ammunition that the sky was "glowing red." The situation went on until
Monday morning. He said, "I usually have my cup of coffee in my small
backyard to drink it in a good atmosphere, but the minute I opened the
door someone from the interior ministry commandos shouted at me, telling
me to get inside or he'd shoot me. Of course I stayed inside and the
shooting continued in a very heavy way until 12:30 p.m., when the
American forces came to start helping the militia's attack on
al-Adhamiya after they were watching the scene from their helicopters."

He went on to state very clearly that "these were members of the Badr
militia and Sadr's Mehdi Army who were raiding the neighborhood."

Another witness at the scene wrote, "Men in police uniforms attacked the
neighbourhood. The Ministry of Interior claimed the uniformed men don't
belong to the puppet [Iraqi government] forces, but local residents are
quite sure they are special-forces from the Ministry of Interior,
probably Badr brigades. The neighbourhood was sealed off and the mobile
phone network was disconnected until 10:45 p.m. Electricity was cut off
from 10 a.m. on."

Meanwhile, Reuters obediently parroted >>>cont