Lebanon: Reporting versus Spin in the LA Times

The violence in Lebanon has calmed down. Concerned Arab leaders are meeting on Sunday to discuss the situation and make proposals. Hezbollah has "melted away" from their occupation of the neighborhood near the American University of Beirut. The Lebanese Army has apparently acceded to Hezbollah demands to correct actions taken by the government.


However, in Beirut on Saturday there was an incident in which at least three people were shot and at least two killed. It is unclear if the two deaths were from the three shootings. A picture in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Edition, page A3 shows at least three wounded people, one of whom appears to be dead (no one is attending him). Two articles appeared with the picture on the same page. I happened to move first to the one written by Raed Rafei, “special to the Times,” so he is probably a local stringer. Rafei had a lot of details. According to him, Sunni mourners headed toward a cemetery carrying the coffin of a young man, age 23, who had been a supporter of the government against Hezbollah. The man's pregnant 17 year-old widow was in the procession.

Given these facts, one can understand the anger that might have been present along with the sadness. Some in the procession fired guns into the air. Some men “on scooters ahead of the procession ordered shopkeepers to shut down their businesses. Boisterous slogans against the Shiite militant group rang out.”

And then violence occurs: “Suddenly a large group of men scurried toward a store that sold auto parts. They started breaking the windows with sticks and shouting, 'God is great!'”

And notice what happens next: “The shopkeeper, reported to be a Shiite opposition supporter, quickly grabbed his assault rifle and fired at the crowd. Two people were killed and 15 injured.”

The rest of this story deals with reactions to the shooting, including interviews with the mother of one of the victims and others. After the procession passed, apparently, the shop that had been attacked was torched by “angry government supporters.” Others were encouraged to get guns and retaliate; they would get their arms “ 'from the north of the country, from Syria or even Israel.' ”

(As an aside, I find it interesting that a supporter of the government would even think it possible that arms even could be obtained from Israel to begin with. Syria you understand; northern Lebanon and the Druse militias or the Lebanese mafiosi you understand, but Israel?)

Now what strikes me about this out break of violence is that if a similar attack on a shop had occurred during a demonstration in the United States, particularly in a gun-toting state like Florida or Texas, say after a demonstration against police brutality, and a shop keeper had pulled a gun and shot the people trying to smash his store, there would be understanding from the gun lobby, maybe even sympathy, even as they condemned the shooting itself. An American shopkeeper definitely would not have used an AK-47, and he probably would have been arrested and tried. But you can foresee, I think, that the American shopkeeper's right to preserve his life and his property would have been a particularly strong part of his legal defense.

I am not trying to defend the violence, but to point out that the matter of defending property, even by using a gun, is frequently lauded, and certainly “understandable” in more conservative circles. Recall the orders to shoot to kill in post-Katrina New Orleans. Think of armed Korean shopkeepers during the Rodney King riots here in Los Angeles. Supporters of the Second Amendment--Libertarians, say--would have had no problem with the shopkeeper's defense, only with the extremity of it.

Now, we don't know if the facts here are absolutely accurate, but they occur in a piece that appears to be neutral, uses direct quotations, and which qualifies statements if things are ambiguous, or uncertain. That is to say, the story has a credible feel to it. You get the impression that the shopkeeper, apart from his possible sectarian leanings, which are thought to be supportive of Hezbollah, may have clearly been defending his livelihood and his life against an attacking mob. If he was a supporter, perhaps a sign in his window outraged the hotheads in the procession. Perhaps they began the violence. End of Exhibit 1.

Yet as the Times officially presents it in the top article on the page, a "gunman believed to be a Shiite" causes the violence. Turn to exhibit two.

This prominent piece, "Lebanon leaders take steps to calm conflict with Hezbollah," is written by a Times staff writer, Borzou Daragahi. That he is a staff writer suggests that his work could combine his own writing and an editor's revisions.

But the “facts” of what is most probably the very same funeral are presented differently in the prominent story. The description of the incident occurs three paragraphs in. Opening with reference to Lebanon's long civil war (1975-1990)--the dates of which are not given but should be--and to “tit-for-tat sectarian attacks” in Iraq, it then describes the action:

At a late morning funeral for a victim of the previous day's violence, a gunman believed to be a Shiite opened fire on Sunni mourners in the procession who had trashed his shop.

Note how the initial presentation is of a “gunman,” not a shopkeeper. He is believed to be a Shiite (as in the stringer's story, “reported to be a Shiite opposition supporter”), so the uncertainly, the hearsay element is conveyed, but the essential fact about the person is not: that is, some of the mourners had “trashed his shop.” The Times writer or editor, in the act of "spinning" the information to emphasize "gunman" does not even deal with the logical contradiction: how can the people be in the procession at the same time that they trash the shop? Further, note how the assumption is that the "gunman" is believed to be a Shiite, which is different than "believed to be a supporter of Hezbollah." (He probably was a Shiite, although other reporting I have read in the past few days on the Lebanese situation has suggested that even some Sunnis actually support Hezbollah.)

The contortion of the sentence indicates, does it not, the mental cross purposes that beget the spin?

Subtle but obvious distortions like this show the difference between reporting with objectivity and reporting with bias, and with the spin obviously against the Shiite Hezbollah supporter, termed a "gunman" rather than a "shopkeeper." We don't know for sure that the person who started firing was a Shiite or a “supporter of Hezbollah.”

The prominent fact is not that the “gunman opened fire on the people marching in the procession” but that a shopkeeper, attacked by people from the procession, grabbed his firearm and probably excessively defended his life or his property. It would be incorrect in this context to call him a "gunman," which suggests something altogether different from an irate and frightened shopkeeper. If you had read only the Times staff reporter's story, that prominent fact is subordinated into the relative clause "who had trashed his shop.” Essential principles of writing indicate that such clauses have less than primary details, so in the act of relegating a primary detail to the relative clause, the writer/editor reveals his bias.

And loses credibility as well. You rarely get an opportunity to check the origin of the spin on the same page. A defender of the Times might say that the two stories were juxtaposed for that very purpose. In that case, the "official" story should have reflected the objectivity in the local stringer's story. The local stringer's detail, shorn of any spin, is far preferable to the “official” Times staffer's reporting on how the violence continues, as the subhead put it.

Afghanistan, Afghanistan: Go fly a Kite

Reading the print edition of the Los Angeles Times for December 22, I found a good illustration of how an ordinary article in a generally well-respected paper tends to spin for the administration. The headline in the Times is “No force 'surge' for Afghanistan.” (Section A, page 3). However, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates did not even use the term “surge” in his press conference:

“You're talking about probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,500 troops . . . So it's not like moving 100,000 troops from one place to the other or something like that.”

Note the deceptive analogy put forth by Secretary Gates by speaking of 100,000 troops. Since that number would almost quadruple the force (given by the Times as 26,000) already in Afghanistan, the comparison was hardly apt, being well beyond an exaggeration. Surge indeed. More like a tsunami at that number. But notice how even in its headline, the Times couldn't do the math correctly to back up its choice of words.

If the total US forces in Afghanistan are at 26,000 as the LATimes reports, an additional 7,500 would certainly qualify to be called a “surge.” That is a 28.8% increase. For comparison, in the so-called “surge” in Iraq, a total of (eventually) 30,000+ troops were added to an existing force of 128,000 which were on the ground early in 2007. The “surge” in Iraq therefore was a percentage increase of roughly 23%. So the question for the Times's staff headline writers and their editors is why present a headline that will seriously misrepresent the increase requested by the Afghanistan commanders? If 23.4% in Iraq qualifies as a "surge," why doesn't 28.8% in Afghanistan?

In other words, the Times tells its readers, we're not going to have to increase our commitment that much. Don't get worried. The increase is minuscule. Certainly not like the surge in Iraq.

But in fact, is this the case? Do we even know how many American troops are fighting in Afghanistan? What is the source for the Times's figure of 26,000? They never tell us where they got the figure, even though Pentagon policy tends to keep the exact number obscured.

What, for example, did Gates and his companion at the press conference, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. James Cartwright, actually say about total troop size in Afghanistan? I excerpt from the text of the press conference itself. This comes from Gates and the General toward the end when speaking of the request from the commander for more troops:

But the bottom line is, you're -- if you have satisfied every requirement he has, you're talking about probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,500 troops. So it's not like moving 100,000 troops from one place to the other or something like that.

And we will be looking at the requirements ourselves, and we will be talking with our allies. But there is clearly, in the view even of the commander on the -- in the field, no requirement for a substantial plus-up of forces in Afghanistan to meet -- to accomplish his mission.

(To the general.) Do you want to add anything --

GEN. CARTWRIGHT: No, I think that's right. It's -- one, it's playing to the strength of your allies, and two, the delta -- we started the year at about 35,000. We're ending the year about 43(,000). And we're trying to make sure that what it is we're doing out there is aligned with the need. To the extent that it is -- that there are needs, it is -- it's about in the 7,500 -- but it's spread across combat-type forces, trainers, et cetera. And so we're trying to make sure we understand that and then target our allies for those capabilities which play to their strengths.

Since the context of the press conference included the trip to Scotland to meet with NATO allies, probably Cartwright was referring to total NATO forces, which were at 41,000 as of July.

However, if Cartwright is referring to the combined NATO forces, he's indicated an increase has already taken place. His statement does not jibe with the recent (less than two weeks old) information from Afghanistan. On December 10, 2007 Gwen Ifill interviewed General Dan McNeill, the International Force Commander, on the Online News Hour. He answered her question about the anticipated needs of the International Force in Afghanistan. Are more NATO forces need? Are more Afghan security forces needed?

I think it means both. By U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, we should have security forces that total well over 400,000. That's not going to happen. The present plan in the international community is to build the Afghan army to a force between 70,000 and 80,000. The police, I believe, the figure is 82,000. NATO right now is running about 41,000.

McNeill says "right now" but that 41,00 figure in turn appears to repeat information as of July, as reported by Pierre Tristram on About.com: Middle East Issues. And that in turn appears to have been based on a Congressional Research Service report from March, 2007. So either McNeill was using those July figures, or perhaps Cartwright knows something McNeill doesn't? It is difficult to get an exact count of United States deployments to Afghanistan, because, according to both Tristram and the CRS, the Department of Defense does not report troop strength.

Note what the remarks were in the press conference from Secretary Gates:

But there is clearly, in the view even of the commander on the -- in the field, no requirement for a substantial plus-up of forces in Afghanistan to meet -- to accomplish his mission.

While McNeill knows that the troops suggested in the insurgency manual are "not going to happen," he clearly needs more troops and clearly has put in a request for the 7,500, but Gates is playing with words here--in terms of what is in place, whether 26,000, 41,000 or 43,000--when he says "no requirement for a substantial plus-up in Afghanistan." Clearly more troops are needed by the ground commander, and 7,500 is substantial. It's just not substantial in terms of that dream number McNeill cited of "well over 400,000" or substantial in terms of Gates's 100,000.

The war in Afghanistan isn't going well. Karzai has asked for more help. Some of the NATO countries are clearly getting uncomfortable with the losing battle and are resisting the US's requests for additional support. According to Gates, the Dutch have re-upped for another two years and other countries are going to keep contributing. Poppy production is at an all-time high. But casualties are increasing. This year, suicide bombings have increased to 130. Civilian casualties, at 2600, are double those of last year. As of today, according to iCasualties.org, 115 U.S. and 114 coalition soldiers have been killed this year .

Two other items in the press conference should be pointed out. First, Gates reminded the reporters that that at least least 5,700 troops will be coming home by the end of the year. The White House itself in its Presidential press release for November 29, 2007 has tried to pass this off as a result of the surge (“5,700: Guided by the principle of 'return on success,' the United States will bring 5,700 troops home by the end of the year as a result of progress made by the surge of operations.”). I think it was Juan Cole who pointed out earlier in the year that these troops were scheduled to be withdrawn in December anyway. Any arguments that the troops would be coming home from Iraq because of the "surge" is highly suspect as spin.

Second, one of reporters--referred to as "Jim" by the Secretary of Defense--actually tries to provoke Gates to give an answer:

Mr. Secretary, the highly respected retired Army General Barry McCaffrey just returned to the U.S. from an extensive tour in Iraq and he was there about the same time you were. And he said that what was striking to him is once you get outside the Green Zone, the national government, in a practical sense, for the people of Iraq just doesn't exist. And he said in fact, the U.S. military on the ground serves that purpose, in assuring that the local populations get the kind of basic services that they need, which are actually required for long-term stability.


And he warns that if you take the military out, all that goes away.


Since the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq is conditional, would that be an absolute condition, that there has to be political reconciliation, political progress made by the national government before substantial numbers of American troops can be withdrawn from Iraq? And what kind of assurances did you get in your meeting with Maliki that he was willing to make progress on those issues?

It's a shame the reporter had to obfuscate his provocative reference to McCaffrey with his questions about "absolute conditions" and "assurances from Maliki." Why not just ask what Gates's response was to McCaffrey's observation? The elaborations just allowed Gates to temporize and blather. Although Gates completely --and predictably--avoided addressing the "highly respected" McCaffrey, he in effect supported McCaffrey's contention:

And creating -- getting the ministries down into the provincial and local areas, you know, frankly -- I mean, this is a challenge we face in Afghanistan, as well. It's a challenge that many developing countries face.

Gates passed the buck. Everything will have to depend on the judgment of Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus "next spring." You may remember that last spring we were told to wait for General Petraeus to report in September. In the spring of 2008 I am sure, we will postpone the decision until the end of summer. And watch how that September 2008 answer will do everything possible to frame success in time for the Presidential elections in November. And so it goes.


(As an aside, I also find it unfortunate that Gates, in talking at the beginning of the conference about his visits to wounded troops and their families, described them as “close encounters.” Unfortunate, I think, because the phrase, in our contemporary movie culture, connotes that the injured troops and their families are aliens. The secretary should not use the phrase again, and I hope that he or his his staff will avoid the inept phrase in the future.)

Kabuki Show at Naval Academy

When I was an Insurance person, one of the things I learned was that when you have a big shindig coming up, you plan it out with plenty of time. All these many weeks I have been waiting to get information about when the Annapolis Conference on Israel and Palestine would be held. Not that I am a prospective invitee, of course, but just so I could KNOW.

Finally, today, I read a piece in Reuters that says that the conference will be held on the 27^th of November (next Tuesday) with meetings the days before and after. If anyone I know in business had decided to call a conference of that magnitude a week before the conference, they would have been lucky if one of the principle invitees showed up. How long has this been going on? Since Bush made a speech back on July 16, 2007. This is the responsibility of the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and she has “funked it.” Badly. In business, she'd get fired or be put on probation.

But note how Reuters reports it: the US said on Tuesday it “has told other nations it will soon send out invitations to the Middle East peace conference it plans to hold in Annapolis, Maryland, but none have gone out yet.” When are they going to send them? Wednesday? Thanksgiving? (Maybe some undocumented alien in the State Department can work all day Thanksgiving to prepare the FedEx packages so the invitations get there by Saturday. After all, she or he is not a real Amurcan and really doesn't need to celebrate Thanksgiving, right?)

In a larger context, of course, the conference has long been seen as a Kabuki Dance, with no real intention on the part of Israel to make any concessions and to stop their illegal expansion of the settlements in the Occupied Territories. Take the report of a prior planning meeting that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on October 19, 2007. Rice left the Mideast after a meeting in Jerusalem after having “shot down the primary Palestinian demands after several days of back-and-forth meetings with Israeli and Palestinian Authority leaders.” (p. A4) Her visit was so bland that it barely received coverage, and an editorial in Ma'ariv quoted by the LAT said “she made it clear that she in fact agrees with most of Jerusalem's demands.” (ibid.)

“During Rice's visit, Palestinian officials took every opportunity to publicly list the issues they wanted addressed before the conference: Palestinian prisoners, the borders of a future Palestinian state, the West Bank barrier being constructed by the Israelis, as well as refugees and Jerusalem.” (ibid, loc.cit.) I'm not Palestinian, but I could add to that a time line for withdrawal and the dismantling of the settlements. No, Rice and her entourage “rarely, if ever” referred to those items, preferring to speak of “core issues”(ibid.) So you can see, the fix is probably in, and the Palestinians will get a ride on the merry go round to nowhere once again.

Rice and Tony Blair, now the international envoy to Israel and Palestine, passed through the separation wall and visited Bethlehem. Sam Bahour, the Palestinian-American businessman and developer, who runs an email service giving news about the Palestinian side of the struggle once or twice a week, was quoted in the Financial Times as saying after the visit: “These moves are not unimportant but I don't want us just to become a university for people to learn how bad things are in Palestine. Palestinians are beyond statements. The Palestinian reality is overwhelming any real hope.”

Syria may or may not come. They have been marginalized, of course, and they know they have a target on their back and are in the rifle sights of the neo-cons. I saw a travel ad in the Los Angeles Times monthly magazine this past Sunday (actually a slick hundred plus pages of advertisements for the West side beautiful people—party hosts, snazzy law firms to hire, slinky models and French fashions. And, oh yes, the crossword puzzle, which everyone use to look forward to doing every week). The ad was of a cowboy in Israel. Yep, the cowboy and his family work a cattle ranch—and the grassy plains and hills in the background make you wonder—where is this? Not out in the desert. Not near the Jordan River. Nope, on the Golan Heights, don't you know, which obviously Israel has now settled. I wonder what the cowboy and his family will do if Israel ever negotiates with Syria to give the Golan Heights back? What's that you say, annexation of territory gained during war is illegal? Well, who cares, pardner, this is Israel!

So there is something to watch the week after Thanksgiving, the Kabuki dance in Annapolis. It will make the news and take your eyes off what going on down in Venezuela.

Venezuela? Yes, according to the press, Chavez is about to take over the country as a real dictator, and there is a popular uprising, a lot of opposition. It's all bullshit. More on that later. There's a real chance that another coup is in the offing. Just a hunch.

Jonah Goldberg redux in the Los Angeles Times

Jonah Goldberg, one of the trio of second-rate conservative voices that the Los Angeles Times management foisted upon us last year, has again done one of his attacks on “liberal hypocrisy,” by cherry picking a line from a Democratic personage–in this case Barack Obama’s remarks reported by the Associated Press the other day.

Goldberg Starts off his column with the assertion that “Barack Obama says preventing genocide isn't a good enough reason to stay in Iraq.” Then he quotes the July 20th AP story by Philip Elliot, which was headlined “Obama: Don't Stay in Iraq Over Genocide.”

Here’s the AP quote Goldberg uses:

"By that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now -- where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife -- which we haven't done," he told the Associated Press. "We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done. Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea."

Goldberg tries to make a connection between the Darfur situation and “the potential genocide” to come in Iraq in order to show how Obama has done a typical hypocritical move, and by asserting that “ Liberals used to be the ones who argued that sending U.S. troops abroad was a small price to pay to stop genocide; now they argue that genocide is a small price to pay to bring U.S. troops home.”

Forget the rhetorical balance of that sentence. Creating a catchy phrase is one sure way of making the distortion memorable. Unfortunately that’s not what Obama said or meant, and by writing this Goldberg only shows how much he wants to distort Obama's views. It is clear that Obama was making a very logical point that appears to elude Goldberg: that staying in Iraq merely to prevent genocide is not sufficient reason for staying at all. The “300,000" figure was obviously meant to underscore the absurdity of the thinking. And it did.

Further, Obama is quite conscious of the fact that withdrawing precipitously from Iraq may increase the violence, and indeed even the AP article makes that clear: “Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, said it's likely there would be increased bloodshed if U.S. forces left Iraq.” It seems to me that all of the Democratic and Republican candidates are saying the same thing, not to mention the vast majority of the rest of Congress, the punditocracy, and all of the administration.

Of course, it might be too much of an intellectual challenge for Goldberg to establish a context of Obama's remarks, or to point out that he called for diplomacy along with the withdrawal. But of course, Goldberg actually might have to think about what Obama is saying if he paid attention to what Obama said. Let’s look at the AP story a bit further to show how Goldberg is twisting context to fit his argument.

First, he refers to Bill Clinton’s misleading statements on his–Clinton’s-- administration not being aware of the genocide in Rwanda, when clearly the phrase had been used in administration discussions, based on 2004 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents. This is a red herring. Goldberg is trying to smear Obama with Clinton’s misleading statements, merely because they are of the same political party. The Clinton false statement has nothing to do with Obama’s.

Second, Goldberg further mentions that Obama called for military intervention in Darfur two years ago and refers to another Times columnist, Niall Ferguson, to back him up, picking up on the charge made by Republicans that Obama is “flip-flopping.” But in the AP piece, Obama clearly indicates he is against unsanctioned US deployment of troops in Darfur, which does not necessarily mean that African Union, UN, or NATO troops (perhaps including US troops under NATO or UN command), shouldn’t assist in Darfur: "We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done,” said Obama. “Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea," he said. Obama were contradicting his position.

Yet, Goldberg fails to mention Obama’s comment. Of course: he doesn’t have much of a point if he shows that he understands what Obama said. Or perhaps--and it wouldn't surprise me, since Goldberg has done it before and will continue to do so--he just decided to ignore the rest of the information and run with the AP headline and a selected quote, then extrapolate to the point of misrepresentation.

Last, and here is where Goldberg reveals his partisan intentions, who has established that increased violence in Iraq after an American retreat would in fact result in “genocide”? Who’s creating this idea to start with?

Certainly the current level of internecine violence, whether arising from insurgents versus collaborators, family or tribal feuds, sectarian, intra-sectarian, jihadist impulses, or, as much as I do not want to say it, but must, gratuitous American violence against civilians or–that ugly euphemism–collateral damage, has been fierce and violent. What accounts for the sudden eruption into worse violence if deaths cause by Americans are taken out of the equation? You know, most of the American press and the administration have never given credence to the two surveys conducted under the Johns-Hopkins School of Public Health auspices and published in The Lancet, though both studies had been shown to be based on solid statistical research methods. In fact, they are the same survey methods employed by the United Nations in making estimates of deaths in Rwanda and Darfur for the conditions we have called “genocide.”

Why should the American withdrawal be the magic ingredient that turns the internal violence of occupation, insurgency, guerrilla tactics and what is essentially a civil war into “genocide?” If anywhere from 100,000 to 1,000,000 (maybe more) Iraqis (including women, children, infants, non-combatants) have already been killed in the Iraq War, over and above normal death rates, why is it that the term “genocide” is being used now to refer to the violence that may or may not occur after the US withdraws?

Goldberg quotes a new study from the Brookings Institution predicting a “humanitarian nightmare" in which we should expect "hundreds of thousands (conceivably even millions) of people to die." (As if we don’t already have an humanitarian nightmare as the result of our illegal invasion.) He quotes reporter Johns Burns of the New York Times in an interview on Charlie Rose: "It seems to me incontrovertible that the most likely outcome of an American withdrawal any time soon would be cataclysmic violence, and I find that to be widely agreed among Iraqis, including Iraqis who widely opposed the invasion."

What he doesn't write, however, is that for over two years now, a vast majority of the Iraqi people have wanted the US out of the country and continue to regard our presence as the major cause of the violence.

Neither of Goldberg’s expert opinions uses the word “genocide.” (And one would assume that, had he found the word "genocide" used by either the Brookings Institute or John Burns, Goldberg would have leaped on the quote and used it.)

Who's coming up with the word "genocide"? Well, it is the AP headline writer and editor trying to be critical of Obama, and then Jonah Goldberg taking the headline as his convenient springboard into distortion; they are the ones who use the word “genocide” in order to get some emotional play, in order to score the cheap point that Obama is apparently "soft" on genocide, making a "liberal flip."

Now, I am not a big fan of Obama or any of the leading Democratic contenders. But after studying this matter, I can see, even despite the critical slanted presentation of the AP article and the critical opinion piece of Goldberg, that Obama has a practicality and consistency that one can appreciate.

The Los Angeles Times does not do well by its readers to continue to publish Goldberg. His opinions are slyly distorted and too selective to have credibility. It’s about time the LAT gave him his pink slip and recruited one of their better and more reliable writers for the opinion page. How about Tim Rutten? Or, heaven forfend, as someone used to say, bring back Robert Scheer.